


Higher Ground

by skarlatha



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Canon Divergence - Better Angels, Dom/sub, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fix-It, I Promise This Ship Works, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, Mentions of Past Rick/Shane, Merle is Canonically a Racist Dick So..., Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 22:47:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2749952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/skarlatha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shane leaves the group after the events of "Better Angels" and runs into the last person he would expect--Merle Dixon. But soon they are setting up an easy truce and Shane finds that Merle Dixon might be more than just a guy to watch his back. He might just be the person that’s able to put Shane’s life back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Higher Ground

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers through S2 E12 ("Better Angels"). No spoilers past that as this is a total canon divergence from that point on.
> 
> Michelle_A_Emerlind (who also beta-ed this work!) has written a companion piece to this that follows Rickyl's part of the story. You can read "Lower Fields" [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2771033).

Shane left the farm twice on the night after Randall died, after Rick had tried to put a knife in his chest, after he’d caught the motion at the last possible second and wrenched the weapon out of Rick’s hand. Both times that night he’d decided that he had to get away, maybe go find Randall’s group and join up, and both times he’d changed his mind after walking a couple of miles in the other direction. It was clear that he didn’t belong with the original group anymore, that there was nothing for him there. Lori didn’t want him and Rick didn’t want him and nobody would ever trust him again, so it didn’t matter what he did. 

But the _real_ problem was that he couldn’t go back but he also couldn’t just leave them to the wolves. If a herd showed up, they needed all the warning they could get. So he found a spot at the edge of the woods and watched the farm from a distance, watched Lori and Rick fight about something and then Lori storm back into the house, watched Daryl cross the yard and hand Rick something, watched Rick stare at the ground alone for a long time before squaring his shoulders and walking back to the porch. Then things quieted down on the farm, lights going out and everyone settling in for the night, and Shane sat down with his back against the trunk of a tree and rubbed his stinging eyes. 

_“There is still a way back from this,” Rick had said, spreading his hands. Shane had watched them, had seen the twitch of his fingers, had seen the knife at Rick’s belt. “Nothing has happened here. We're gonna lay down our guns and we're gonna walk back to the farm... Together. Back to Lori. Back to Carl. Put this all behind us.”_

_Shane had left his gun up but wasn’t pointing it at Rick’s head anymore. The rage had already seeped away from him, running down over his skin like a warm summer rain, and he knew it would come back eventually but he’d also known that without it he couldn’t shoot his best friend. His ex-lover. His Rick._

_And then when Rick had pulled the knife to kill him, Shane had reacted with lightning-quick reflexes, the way they always worked together, and grabbed Rick’s wrist before he got any deeper than the skin. “There’s no way back from this, Rick,” he’d growled. “Not anymore. You know it and I know it.”_

_“What are you gonna do?” Rick had whispered, his voice rough and far too close for Shane’s comfort. “Kill me?”_

_“I’m gonna walk away,” Shane had said. “Fuck you and your damn family. Fuck the whole group. If they want to follow you, they deserve what they get.”_

And so he’d walked away, and here he was, sitting at the base of a tree, staring at the dark farmhouse across the field. He hated Rick now, _hated_ him, and he hated everything about the group and what the group was doing and what the group had made him into, but he couldn’t leave. This wasn’t the first time he and Rick had broken up over the years, and they always ended up back in bed together eventually. But now everybody had turned against him and Rick was going to kill him, too. After everything. After all those years and all those touches and all those looks that he was just so damn sure meant _something_. But apparently not. Or at least not what Shane had always hoped they meant. 

Shane was so lost in his own swirling thoughts, lost in Rick like he always was, that he didn’t hear the walker shuffling toward him until it was almost on him. He scrambled to his feet and picked up his gun, aiming it at the walker, then hesitated.

A shot would alert more of them. He knew that. And he couldn’t do that to the group at the farm, to Rick, to any of them. Not when the bloodlust had washed away from him. Not when he was almost himself again, standing in the woods with the people he loved sleeping across the field. He had nothing else, though, just the gun. He willed himself to squeeze the trigger, to save himself, and then he thought of Carl, the boy’s sleeping face and how he didn’t deserve any of this. 

“Dumbass,” he heard muttered from behind him, and then Merle Dixon-- _Merle Dixon_ , out of everyone in the world it could possibly have been--materialized out of the shadows and slammed a hatchet into the walker’s wasted face. The corpse fell to the ground and Merle put his foot on its chest to yank the hatchet out of its skull. 

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Shane stared at him for a few seconds. “You’re alive?”

Merle gave him an extremely condescending look. “No shit.” He grabbed the hem of Shane’s shirt and used it to wipe the gore off of the hatchet. “Damn wonder _you_ are, though, sittin’ in the woods blubbering and not listening for walkers.”

Shane frowned and yanked his shirt fabric away from Merle. “I wasn’t blubbering.”

“Yeah, well, might as well have been, the way you was rubbin’ your eyes and breathin’ so loud I could hear you from twenty yards back.” Merle slipped the hatchet back into a makeshift axe-holster and raised an eyebrow at Shane. “What you doin’ out here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be busy sniffing at that bitch’s crotch like always?”

“Who, Lori?” Shane asked, then scoffed out loud. “Nah, her _husband’s_ back and she don’t want nothing to do with me no more.”

“Them’s the breaks,” Merle said. “Them assholes leave you out on a roof to die too?”

“I left,” Shane told him. He kicked the motionless walker and rolled it over onto its back, mostly to have something to do. “I tried to shoot Rick but I pussied out. So I left.”

“Who the hell is Rick? You mean Officer Friendly?” 

“The one who cuffed you, from what I heard. Yeah.” Shane toed the walker again, focused his gaze on the ground. “Also known as Lori’s husband. Back from the dead and shit. Alive, though.”

“Fucker,” Merle muttered. “Well, prob’ly for the best. Killin’ a man fucks you up.”

Shane paused, then said, “I know.” The silence of the woods turned to lead and the metallic taste of it flooded Shane’s mouth. He sighed, thinking of Otis, of Randall, of almost-Rick, of all the criminals he had to gun down in the line of duty back when there was any point in the law, and he wished he’d kept his badge because at least that gave him a sense of honor, something to aspire to, something that would have made him better than what he’d become without it.

After a long moment of silence, Merle grunted and scratched his neck. “So anyway, you can come back to my campsite with me if you need a sleeping bag. I got an extra.”

Blinking, Shane looked over at him. “Did I miss something?”

“What?” Merle spat on the ground and shrugged. “Nah, you didn’t miss nothin’. I was just thinkin’ I could use an extra pair of hands. Since I’ve only got the one, you know.” He lifted his arm-stump and waved it at Shane.

Shane stared at the stump, the long sleeve of the flannel shirt ending in a knot at the end of it and contrasting with Merle’s other arm, bare from the shoulder down. He wondered if he’d be able to do that, to take a saw and chop off his own limb to save himself, and he honestly wasn’t sure. He wondered what that said about what had happened with Otis--Shane would gun a man down without hesitation but wasn’t sure he’d hurt himself for the same reason. “You trust me?” he said finally, looking up at Merle’s face. 

“Not as far as I can throw you, piggy-boy,” Merle said immediately. “But I figure it’d be nice to have somebody keeping watch while I’m takin’ a shit. A man alone in this world is a dead man and I don’t wanna get taken out while I’m dropping the kids off at the pool, you know?” 

Shane looked out through the edge of the woods toward the farmhouse. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Damn straight it makes sense,” Merle said, his gravelly voice sure, cocky, confident. “Come on, I’ll take you to my spot. It’s up the hill a ways, but not too far. Really just far enough that my brother won’t see us so easy from the treeline.”

Shane wrinkled his forehead at that. “You know Daryl’s out there?”

“Yeah,” Merle said. “I’ve been tracking you guys for days. Hadn’t decided if I wanted to join back up with you yet on account of you _chained me to a roof and left me there_ , but I figured I could keep an eye on my baby brother for a few days at least. Keep the walkers away.” He grunted again. “Best I can, anyway. One man can only do so much.”

“So that’s why you really want me,” Shane said, running his tongue over his top lip absently. “To help you watch out for _Daryl Dixon_.” 

“You’re a real smart cookie, Pedro, you know that?” Merle said, with sarcasm glinting in his eyes in the dark. He grabbed Shane’s shoulder and turned him to face east, then gave him a little shove to start him walking. “And also ‘cause I have to take a shit and I need somebody to keep an eye out for me. Like I said. Now let’s go.”

Shane almost refused, but the thought of a sleeping bag instead of a tree trunk sounded pretty nice, and a campsite implied at least some basic food supplies, so it seemed like an easy decision to follow the grizzled redneck back to his camp, at least for the night. And besides, it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. After what had happened with Otis, he wasn’t sure that he had a good enough poker face to convince Randall’s group that he hadn’t been the one to take Randall out, and anyway, this way he could get a little distance from Rick while still keeping watch for them. So, finally, he nodded and let Merle take him to the campsite. 

***

Shane woke up the next morning in a cheap Walmart sleeping bag, damp with dew, and opened his eyes to look around for Merle. The redneck was kneeling in front of a log, attempting to hold a dead squirrel still with his stump while using his only hand to maneuver a knife around and skin the animal. He muttered curses under his breath as he struggled with the task. 

Shane sat up. “You need help over there?”

“You think?” Merle snapped. “Fuckin’ bastard asswipe motherfucker. If he was gonna cuff me to the roof and make me chop off my hand he coulda at least cuffed my _left_ hand. Made all this bullshit so much easier.”

Shane slithered out of the sleeping bag and pulled his discarded blue button-up shirt on over his head, leaving it open to the middle of his chest because this was just Merle Dixon and who cared how presentable he looked these days, anyway. It wasn’t like there was anybody left to impress.

He stalked over to Merle and took the hunting knife from him, then knelt down and grabbed the squirrel, trying to figure out Merle’s strategy for skinning it. 

Merle smirked at him. “You ever cleaned a squirrel?”

“It’s been a while,” Shane admitted. “I’m more of a frogs and ducks kind of guy myself.”

Merle gave Shane a quick run-down of the process, then sat back and watched him work. “So,” he said after a minute. “How’s my baby brother?”

“All cozied up in Rick’s asshole, last I saw,” Shane said. He laughed bitterly. “I guess you could say I got demoted.” 

“Yeah, I was noticin’ that he and Officer Friendly seemed awful buddy-buddy,” Merle said. He picked up a twig and twirled it in his fingers. 

“Well, Rick can kiss my ass,” Shane said, pulling the squirrel’s skin and then making another cut. “He and I go way back. But apparently that don’t mean shit when a redneck asshole with a crossbow starts followin’ him around like a lost puppy.”

“Hey,” Merle said. “Choose your words more carefully when you’re talkin’ about my brother.”

Shane paused, looked over at Merle. “You know, that’s exactly what he said to me once about you.” 

“Really?” Merle said, sitting back a little and grinning. “What’d you call me to get him to say that?”

“Douchebag,” Shane said. “And I meant it, too.”

Merle threw back his head and laughed. “Right back at ya, piggy-boy. Least we’re on the same page about each other.”

***

The next few days passed relatively uneventfully. Merle had set up a complicated perimeter around the camp that would be easily tripped by both the living and the dead, and so they felt confident enough to both sleep at night. They took turns cooking, mostly heating up canned food that Merle had found in a storm cellar on his way to the farm, and that worked out for a few days before Merle started to complain about the lack of fresh meat. And so they ended up out early one morning, just as the dew started evaporating off the Georgia ground, setting rabbit snares. 

Shane leaned back and surveyed his handiwork. This was the fifth snare he’d set this morning, and he thought he might have finally got the hang of it after Merle’s instruction. Merle was crouched beside him, chewing on a twig, and Shane looked over at him for confirmation. 

“Well, maybe we’ll strike it lucky and the rabbits out here will be dumb little fuckers,” Merle said after a moment. 

Shane worked his jaw a little. “I think it looks good.”

“Well, it ain’t the _worst_ snare I ever saw, but it sure as hell ain’t the best.” Merle grinned at him, the twig clamped tightly between his molars. 

“Maybe that’s because you’re a shitty teacher,” Shane said, frowning but not really putting that much energy into the expression. 

Merle clapped him on the shoulder and stood up. “Hey, I was a damn good teacher before I had to chop myself up to a nub. Where’d you think Daryl learned it all?”

“You’re tellin’ me that _you_ taught Daryl to track and trap?” Shane said. “You were some kind of fuckin’ redneck Mr. Miyagi?”

Merle shrugged and spat out his twig. “Somebody had to teach the little shit some survival skills and our Dad was a fucker who wouldn’t step up. So yeah, I taught him. He got better’n me real quick, though. Surpassin’ the master and all that.”

Shane found himself smiling even though he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because for a few minutes, he hadn’t thought about Rick. About all the bullshit. About how his life was out of control and he couldn’t figure out why or how to fix it, how to pull himself back in and be the good man he’d always thought he was. But of course thoughts like that made him go back to thinking about Rick, and his smile faded as he stood up and brushed the dirt and pinestraw off his knees. 

“We setting more of them?” Shane asked, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. 

“You need the practice, bud,” Merle answered. He grinned at Shane, his improbably perfect teeth glinting in the sun. 

Shane rolled his eyes and picked up the snare-making tools, the sharp pocketknife and the spool of twine. He flicked the pocketknife closed and slipped the tools in his pocket. “Alright,” he said. “Where next?” 

Merle looked around, then pointed to a patch of bramble on the top of a small ridge nearby. “Looks like there’s a run going up through there.” 

Shane nodded and pulled his way up the ridge, then reached down to offer Merle a hand. The other man grunted, frowning, but took Shane’s hand and let him pull him up the incline. Shane clapped him on the shoulder when they were both up on top of the ridge, but then voices floated toward them and they both crouched down and looked in the direction of the sound, Shane drawing his handgun and Merle pulling his hatchet out of its home in his belt. 

There was a slope downward from where the two of them were hiding, and down the hill and a little ways away, Rick was walking briskly through the woods, one hand hooked in his belt and the other pressed to his mouth, palm-out like he was trying to hold in some of his emotion. Merle turned his head to look at Shane, but Shane kept his eyes on Rick, fighting his own desire to go down to him and find out what was wrong. 

“Rick.” It was Daryl’s voice, calling from closer to the treeline. Rick stopped walking and dipped his head, lowering his other hand to hook in his belt on the other side. He left his back to Daryl and stood there, waiting. 

Daryl said something else to him as he got closer, and Shane could hear their voices but not the words themselves. Rick stayed facing away from Daryl as he responded to whatever the younger Dixon brother was saying to him.

Merle elbowed Shane and put his finger over his own lips when Shane glanced over at him. Shane nodded curtly and looked back out at Rick and Daryl. 

Daryl stopped behind Rick and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. He murmured something, so softly that no sound reached Shane and Merle at all. Rick lifted his hand back to his mouth again, leaving his head bowed. Then Daryl slid his hand down to Rick’s upper arm, turned him gently around, pulled Rick into his arms. 

Rick stood there, concrete and steel, for a couple of seconds before he sagged into Daryl’s embrace, burying his head in Daryl’s shoulder, and when Daryl turned his head to press his lips against Rick’s neck, Shane’s jaw twitched as Rick’s hands twisted in Daryl’s shirt, clutching and wanting. 

Merle tugged on Shane’s shirt sleeve. “Come on, let’s go.” 

Shane shook his head, hard enough to make himself a little dizzy. Merle frowned and tugged again, then grabbed Shane’s handgun from him and motioned back toward the campsite with it. 

“No,” Shane said, reaching to try and get the gun back, but Merle held it away from him.

“I don’t wanna see this and I figure you don’t, neither,” Merle said, keeping his voice low. “Let’s get back to camp.”

Finally, Shane forced his eyes away from the spectacle below him and followed Merle back to the campsite. The image of Rick and Daryl embracing dulled his senses, made him breathe through his nose fast and deep, and Shane walked on autopilot as he followed Merle through the woods. 

Rick and Daryl. Daryl’s lips on Rick’s skin. The way Rick relaxed into the other man, let him in. The way Rick’s muscles had been tense under Shane’s hands his whole life and nothing he’d ever done had made him let loose the way Daryl’s arms had. The utter unfairness of everything, that nothing Shane had ever had in his life had turned out to be real, to be permanent, to be what he needed it to be. The pinestraw ground blurred as he walked, keeping the heels of Merle’s feet in his vision so he could follow him back without looking up.

When they got back to camp, Shane paced around the clearing, his hands clutching at his own scalp like he’d forgotten he didn’t have hair to pull anymore. He muttered under his breath while he walked, spewing curse after curse into the quiet air of the forest. Merle leaned against a tree and watched him pace for a long time.

“You gonna keep doing that all night?” Merle asked after a while. He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows at Shane.

“No,” Shane bit out. “I have to do something. I have to… I’m gonna kill him. I should have killed him the other night. Rick’s a fucking dead man. I’m gonna kill him.”

Merle rolled his eyes. “You ain’t gonna do any such thing. Sides, why do you even care?”

“Because that _dick_ \--” Shane points in the general direction of where they’d seen Rick and Daryl disappear into the woods-- “had his fucking hands on Rick.”

“More than his hands, I expect,” Merle said. He reached down with his handless arm to scratch his leg with the knotted fabric on the end of his stump. “They looked pretty damn friendly.”

“Why the hell you so calm about this, huh?” Shane demanded. He paused in his pacing long enough to fix Merle in his glare. “That’s your brother.”

Merle shrugged. “Daryl’s queer as a three-dollar bill,” he said. “Ain’t no surprise to me.”

“And that’s okay with you?” Shane asked, his eyebrows high on his forehead. 

“None of my business who the little shit fucks,” Merle said, shrugging again. “And he don’t listen to me anyway. Never has. Least not about that kind of shit.”

“Well, he and I need to have a long talking-to about that,” Shane growled. “He needs to keep his fucking hands off of Rick.”

“Yeah, prob’ly,” Merle admitted. “Touching pigs just gets bacon grease all over your hands, you know?”

Shane pointed at Merle menacingly, licked his lips, and widened his eyes. “You shut the hell up before I shoot you.” He started pacing again, pausing at the end of one of the circuits to kick a tree trunk. 

“I ask you again, why do you even care?” Merle spat on the ground and watched Shane move.

“Because…” Shane paused, both vocally and in his pacing. “I don’t know.”

“There’s something going on with you,” Merle pointed out. “What, you some kind of queer-ass punk like Daryl? You got a woody for Officer Friendly too?”

“You shut your mouth,” Shane said. He took a couple of ground-eating steps toward Merle. “Don’t you say that word at me. You don’t know nothing about me.”

“Hey, it’s fine if you do, man. I’ve done time. I get male bonding.” Merle reached up with his only hand and picked at something stuck in his teeth. 

Shane glared at him for a few seconds, then looked off into the woods in the direction of Rick and Daryl. Anger filled him, the initial rush of pure rage slamming through him all at once and then a slow boil rising from the foundation of it, and he felt his mind splintering away from him like it had before--in the quarry when Ed had hurt Carol, in the woods when Dale had caught him aiming a rifle at Rick, in the yard while the Walkers clawed at the closed barn door and no one fucking moved, no one did anything, the choice was all on him because everyone else was content to stand by and die for principles that didn’t fucking _mean_ anything anymore. Because Rick wouldn’t lead but also wouldn’t give up his leadership. Because Rick had chosen Daryl, all along, from the moment the bastard had walked out of the woods to look at that chewed-up deer and then later when Shane had seen the look in Rick’s eyes when he locked them with Daryl’s. It wasn’t even love, or lust, or anything easy to stomach like that. No, it was trust. Trust that he used to give to Shane. 

Rick hadn’t looked at him with trust in his eyes for months, even before the apocalypse, and now Shane felt his vision go sharp, every leaf and every pine needle standing out like an enemy to be eliminated, and there was nothing in the world except the need to have blood on his hands, to have vengeance, to have someone fucking _notice_ him again. 

“I’m gonna kill him,” he muttered again, deadly soft, then turned and stalked over to where his gun was propped against the tree. “I’m gonna kill both of those motherfuckers.” 

There was an audible click that Shane would recognize anywhere, and then there was a ring of cold metal pressed to the back of Shane’s head. Shane froze in place and lifted his hands so Merle could see he wasn’t reaching for the shotgun anymore. 

“Now you listen here, piggy-boy,” Merle said, and his voice was low and angry like Shane had never heard it before. “You say you’re gonna go kill that asshole copper and I don’t give two shits. Bastard has it coming and if it ain’t you it’s gonna be somebody. But don’t you fucking dare threaten my baby brother, you hear me?”

Shane grunted, and the barrel of the gun Merle had taken from him earlier pressed harder against the back of his head. “I said do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Shane said, keeping his voice even. This was part of police training, and he had always been good at this test. So good that it felt strangely satisfying to be on the business end of a pistol, because at least he knew how to handle that sort of thing. There was always that moment of clarity, that instant where he knew that there was only one decision he could make and that that decision was to do nothing, to stand still, to let someone else lead. To stop fighting for once. 

“Good,” Merle said. “Now turn around. Nice and slow. And if you reach for that gun I’ll blow your fucking head off. Won’t even hesitate. So don’t try it.”

Shane slowly turned to face Merle, leaving his hands in the air. Merle kept the gun pointing at him, and when Shane was facing him, he moved forward so that the barrel of the gun was pressed against Shane’s skull between his eyes. 

“You gone off the deep end, Officer Walsh,” Merle said, mockery plain in his voice. “They shoulda killed you when they had the chance.”

Shane met Merle’s eyes calmly, focusing on Merle’s face and looking past the gun pressed against his forehead like it wasn’t even there. “You’re probably right.”

Merle narrowed his blue eyes and searched Shane’s brown ones, then whistled low under his breath. “Damn, boy. You’re lost as fuck, ain’t ya?” 

“No,” Shane said. He kept his eyes on Merle’s. 

“Oh yeah you are,” Merle said. He pulled the gun back away from Shane’s skin but left it pointing at his forehead. “Listen to me, asshole. You listening?”

Shane nodded, lowering his hands slowly to his sides. Merle already knew he wasn’t armed since the gun he was pointing at Shane was the one he’d taken from him a few minutes before, and the shotgun wasn’t within reach anymore, so it seemed like a nonthreatening gesture. 

“I can help you,” Merle said. “You gonna let me help you?”

“I don’t need your help,” Shane bit out. “With anything.”

Merle laughed. “Yeah, you’re doing such a good job keeping yourself sane without ol’ Merle, ain’t ya?”

“What the fuck do you know about me?” Shane glared harder. “And put the fucking gun down, man. We both know you ain’t gonna shoot me.”

“Nah, I ain’t. Not unless you make me by being a stupid fuck like you was about to be,” Merle admitted. “But it’s good insurance to make sure I have your attention. And who knows, maybe I’ll get tired of looking at your ugly mug and put a nice hole in it anyway.”

Shane ground his teeth together. “Well, you got my attention. What you gonna do now?”

Merle grinned at him. “Ol’ Merle’s gonna fix you, señorita.” He waved the gun at Shane. “On your knees. Nice and slow.”

Shane waited for the flash of panic that should have raced through him, but Merle was looking at him with fire in his eyes but no menace, no hate, only mischief. Still, though, the gun was pointed at him. “You do this to me, you gonna die, you understand me?”

Merle rolled his eyes. “I ain’t gonna do nothing to you that you don’t want me to do, piggy-boy.” He waved the gun again. “On your knees.”

And then something _did_ race through Shane’s body, but it was the opposite of panic. Calm spread through him, and not the impotent kind of calm from when Merle had first pulled the gun on him. Not the calm that comes from having all his options torn away from him, but the calm that comes from giving up the options willingly, letting someone else have the responsibility because he didn’t want it and not because they wanted to take it from him. That calm started from his brain and curled deliciously through the rest of him, and he felt himself sliding down to his knees. He locked eyes with Merle again, looking up at him this time, and waited. 

“Alright, here’s what’s gonna happen,” Merle said. “I’m gonna put this gun away and then I’m gonna give you the honor and the privilege of sucking my _other_ gun, you understand?”

Shane just stared at him, and he wasn’t as surprised as he should have been when the calm in his veins started slowly twining with a tingle of desire. 

Merle waved the gun again. “Answer me when I ask you a question, señorita.”

“Yes,” Shane said quietly, respectfully. His cock started to swell in his pants and the edges of his vision narrowed to focus on just Merle. “I understand.”

“Good,” Merle said. He flicked the safety on the gun and then tossed it off to the side. “Now you listen to me. This right here? It’s gonna be consensual as fuck. But you look like the kinda prick who’s gonna tell me no when you don’t mean it, so here’s the deal. You say no, I fuck you harder. You struggle, I tie you down. But you say ‘Tinkerbell’ and I’ll back the fuck off. No questions asked. Nod if you understand me.”

Nothing in Shane’s life had made sense for months. This did. He nodded. 

Merle chuckled low, under his breath. “That’s what I thought. But it don’t matter, because you ain’t gonna say no and you ain’t gonna struggle. You’re gonna be a good little bitch, ain’t ya?”

“Yes,” Shane murmured, and he wasn’t sure if the rasp in his voice was from dehydration or lust or adrenaline or a weird combination of all three.

“Fuck yeah you are,” Merle said, reaching down with his good hand to unbutton his pants. “Take off that shirt, piggy-boy. Let me see the merchandise.”

Shane reached behind his head and gripped his shirt in a fist, then yanked it over his head and tossed it off to the side. The cool forest air started to evaporate the light sheen of sweat on his skin, leaving a tingling ice sensation behind. Merle raked his eyes over Shane’s body and Shane shivered at both the ice in the air and the heat in Merle’s expression. 

Merle grunted in appreciation and then yanked his zipper down. He hooked his missing arm under Shane’s chin, pressing upward and pulling Shane’s gaze up to his face. “Eyes up here, baby. Don’t wanna give you a heart attack when the big boy comes out to play.”

Shane stared up at him, his jaw set. He should hate this, he really should. He should bark out that stupid-as-fuck safeword and stomp off into the woods after giving Merle a massive shiner in both eyes. He should go find Rick and apologize…

Merle snapped his fingers in Shane’s face. “You better knock that off, boy,” he warned, his eyes steely and hard. “You about to get your face fucked by Merle Fucking Dixon and I ain’t having your fucked-up mind go anywhere else but here, you understand?”

Rick’s face faded away from Shane’s mind as he focused back on Merle’s stubbled jawline. Merle was right. The past was gone and none of that mattered anymore. All that mattered was this--this clearing, this moment, the blood pumping through his veins. Tension started to flow out of Shane’s shoulders and he took a deep, steadying breath, then nodded. 

“Tell me you’re sorry,” Merle said. He reached down and shoved his own pants over his hips. Shane heard the fabric rustle as it slid down Merle’s legs and hit the ground, but Merle’s arm stayed under his chin to keep him from looking down. “Tell ol’ Merle you’re sorry for thinking about some dirty swine copper-douche while you’re on your knees in front of him.”

“I’m sorry,” a voice said, and Shane was both surprised and not surprised to realize that it was his own. 

“Good boy,” Merle said. He dropped his arm away from Shane’s chin and then smirked when Shane left his head in the same tilted-up position, his eyes latched to Merle’s face. “Oh, yeah buddy, you was made for this. Weren’t ya?”

Shane’s cock was pressing against his jeans hard, the zipper digging into his skin and making it sting, but Merle hadn’t told him to move, so he wouldn’t. He just kept looking up at the man above him, his only movement another nod. 

“Open up,” Merle said, and he took a step closer to Shane and used his dick to smack Shane in the cheek, leaving a sticky trail of pre-cum on his skin. Shane shivered again and opened his mouth wide. Merle looked down at him and gave a self-satisfied half-smile, then grabbed the back of Shane’s head to hold it steady as he pistoned his hips forward and shoved his cock into Shane’s mouth, all in one smooth, hard movement that tore a grunt out of Shane’s throat. 

Merle’s cock was an average length, but it was thick, and Merle definitely wasn’t going easy on him. He didn’t give Shane time to adjust before he started thrusting into Shane’s mouth, fast and deep, and Shane almost gagged around the length of it. Merle slowed down then, just a little. “Relax your throat, baby,” he said, his voice even rougher than usual. “Your mouth was made to have my cock in it. Let it do what it was made for. Don’t fight it.”

Shane looked up at Merle through his eyelashes and systematically relaxed his jaw and throat. He’d sucked cocks before a few times, even thought he was pretty good at it, but then nobody else had ever held on to the back of his head and pounded his mouth like this. It was uncomfortable and even a little painful, the way his lips stretched around Merle’s girth and the tip of the man’s cock kept hitting the back of his throat, but it the whole scene was dirty as fuck and Shane couldn’t remember a time in his whole life when he’d been harder than this. When he’d wanted it this much. 

Merle shoved his cock all the way in Shane’s mouth again and then left it there, holding Shane’s head in place. “I’m gonna pull all the way out, you hear? Let you have a chance to speak if you need to. You remember the word, dontcha?”

Shane nodded as best he could with his mouth full of Merle’s dick, breathing heavily through his nose. He remembered the word, but he wasn’t going to use it. His whole body felt tight with the need to taste Merle all over his tongue, and there was no way he was going to give that up right now. Not when for the first time in months he finally felt like he was where he wanted to be. 

“Okay, you got five seconds, then, and if you don’t say nothing then I’m going at you hard again, you understand?”

Shane nodded again, and when Merle released his skull and slid his cock out of Shane’s mouth, Shane embarrassed himself by moaning at the loss of it, even following it with his lips as it left them. The five seconds ticked off quietly and endlessly, and then Merle grinned down at him. “Ready for more, baby?”

“Yes,” Shane rasped, and the soreness in his throat as he tried to speak just turned him on even more. He wondered if he was allowed to come in his pants, because it was starting to look like that might be a thing that might happen anyway. He opened his mouth wide again.

Merle chuckled. “You’re mighty eager, señorita. Let’s see what you can do.” He reached down and grabbed his own cock, then smacked it down hard against Shane’s tongue. “Move however you want. Suck it like it’s the goddamn cocksucking Olympics and you’re going for the gold.”

Shane closed his lips around Merle’s cock and bobbed his head on it, swirling his tongue around the head of it. He lifted his hands and wrapped one around the base, then stroked it with short twists of his wrist while he pulled his mouth back off of it and darted his tongue out, brushing it over the tip and licking up the sticky beads of pre-cum there. He held Merle’s eyes with his own and when Merle let out a little breathless grunt, the first sign of pleasure he’d given, the sound went straight to Shane’s cock and he moaned as he slid his mouth forward, taking Merle all the way in again. 

“Fuck,” Merle said as Shane moved his hands, cupping Merle’s balls and squeezing them just right while he moved his head back and forth, dragging his tongue over the underside of Merle’s cock and never breaking eye contact with Merle. “Fuck, boy, it’s been a while. This ain’t gonna take long.”

Shane hummed around Merle’s cock, consumed with the desperate need to please Merle, to do whatever Merle asked of him, to let go and not give a shit about anything else. To be used, to be owned, to be controlled. To trust and be trusted. Merle’s short nails dug into the back of Shane’s skull and Shane relaxed his throat again and let the tip of Merle’s cock slide into it. 

“Shit,” Merle said under his breath, then adjusted his stance and went back to fucking Shane’s mouth, slamming all the way in over and over again, and Shane was grateful for the zipper digging into his own dick because he was sure that the pain of it was the only thing keeping him from exploding himself.

“You ready for this?” Merle gasped out. He shoved himself in again and Shane whimpered around him, trying to will his eyes to look as hungry as his throat felt so that Merle would know how much he needed this. 

And Merle must have known, because he grinned down at Shane and growled, “Yeah, boy, you look thirsty for it. Good boy.” His breath hitched and Shane felt Merle’s dick start to pulse in his mouth before Merle slammed in all the way one more time and came hard, in thick jets that splashed against the back of his throat and trickled down, filling his insides with Merle and warmth and a slow, rolling sense of peace, of surrender. 

Merle pulled out slowly, then kicked his pants off from around his ankles and knelt down in front of Shane. “Good boy,” he said again. “Now open your mouth. Show ol’ Merle you swallowed.” 

Shane dropped his mouth open immediately--wanting, needing, euphoric--the taste of Merle making his head spin and his blood race. 

Merle nodded with approval and then locked his eyes on Shane’s, his blue irises burning like the deep coals at the center of a bonfire. “Take your pants off,” he said. “I want you naked like a whore.”

Shane let out a strangled whimper and Merle reached forward and raked his nails down Shane’s chest, hard enough to leave angry red marks on Shane’s skin. “You better focus,” Merle growled. “I ain’t told you you can come yet.” 

Reaching down with shaking hands, Shane unfastened his pants, hissing with pain and pleasure as his dick burst free of his zipper. He kept his eye contact with Merle as he slid out of his pants and went back to kneeling in front of him.

Merle looked down at Shane’s cock and whistled, low under his breath. “That’s a nice piece of chorizo you got there, baby. You want me to touch it?”

Shane nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard. 

“Well, that’s too bad, ‘cause I only got one hand and I got better things to do with it. You’ll have to cock your own shotgun tonight, baby,” Merle said. He grabbed Shane’s bicep and pulled him closer, turning Shane’s body so that he was sitting on Merle’s thighs with his back against Merle’s chest. 

Merle hooked his handless arm around Shane’s hard, muscled stomach to hold him up, then ran his tongue up the outer edge of Shane’s ear as he slid his fingers into Shane’s mouth. “Suck ‘em. Get ‘em nice and wet.” Shane moaned and closed his lips around Merle’s fingers, running his tongue over them. 

Merle chuckled low into Shane’s ear and then reached down between them to run his wet fingers over Shane’s hole. Shane shuddered, his cock twitching hard, and threw his head back so that the back of his skull was lying on Merle’s shoulder. Merle turned his head and bit down on Shane’s tense, corded neck, raking his teeth over the skin and making Shane moan. 

“I’m gonna finger-fuck you while you jerk yourself,” Merle growled, his lips back at Shane’s ear. “And you’re gonna come all over your own chest and you’re gonna say my name while you do it, you understand?”

Shane’s eyes rolled back in his head and his breath started to come in gasps. His skin radiated heat, sweat glistening on it in the filtered sunlight, and he needed this, needed Merle, couldn’t imagine in this moment that anyone else could be turning his whole body inside out this way. And then Merle’s fingers were breaching his opening and Shane bit his lip to keep from screaming _yes_ into the forest. 

“Look how good you are,” Merle said, sliding his slick fingers in and out of Shane’s body. “Look how good a little bitch you are for me, boy.” He bit down on Shane’s neck again and then sucked at the spot hard, marking him, and Shane reached down with trembling hands and started to stroke himself, his head still lying back on Merle’s shoulder. 

Merle licked his way back up Shane’s neck, up to his jawline, back to his ear. “Next time you gonna take my cock like this, baby.” He dragged his fingers over Shane’s prostate, chuckling as Shane jerked hard and sucked in a sudden, deep breath. “Fuck, look how much you want me, huh?” Shane sped up his strokes, panting, gasping, whimpering, and Merle kept up his relentless rhythm while Shane matched his own speed to Merle’s. “Come on, you’re ready. Come for me. Come for me and say my fuckin’ name.”

Shane’s entire body arched and he gave himself one more stroke before flying apart, yelling Merle’s name into the trees, probably too loudly but the forest stayed silent around the echoes as Shane’s eyes focused on the sky again, focused on Merle’s breath against his shoulder, on Merle’s fingers slipping slowly out of him. He sagged back against Merle and tried to remember how to breathe. 

“Damn, boy,” Merle said after a few moments, moving Shane off of his thighs and pushing himself up to his feet. “You just sank right into that, didn’t ya? Anybody ever done you like this before?”

Shane just stared at him, his eyes slightly unfocused, and shook his head very slowly. The forest was quiet and the sun filtering through the leaves dappled the ground in front of him, and every inch that Merle moved away from him felt like a rubber band pulling him tighter. _What the fuck have you done to me?_ he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t seem to get his vocal cords involved in the process and anyway he couldn’t quite muster up the anger he’d need to put behind the words. Not yet. Not when he could still feel Merle’s fingers inside him and Merle’s teeth on his neck and Merle’s tongue on the curve of his ear. 

He only noticed he was shivering when Merle picked up one of the sleeping bags, shook it out, and draped it over Shane’s shoulders. He looked up at Merle with a rush of gratitude as he pulled the fabric tighter around himself.

“Don’t worry, señorita,” Merle said, smiling down at him. “You’ll get your words back in a few minutes. Maybe even your bones, too.”

He turned to walk away again and Shane’s hand shot out from under the blanket and grabbed the stump of Merle’s arm, wrapping his fingers around it. Merle stopped and turned around, carefully prying Shane’s fingers off of the knotted fabric with his good hand. “Careful, baby, that’s still a little tender,” he said, his voice unusually gentle. 

“Stay,” Shane rasped, and it registered in the back of his brain that there shouldn’t be any reason why he should be asking Merle Dixon to stay with him, why he should want to be close to him, why any of this should have happened at all. But hell, it just felt so good to be here like this, the blood flowing slowly like warm honey through his veins, the forest muted and safe, the jagged edges of what was left of his soul sanded down to smooth waves. Right now, there was no Rick and no Lori and no apocalypse and there was only Shane, and not even Shane but Merle, and he had no idea how to deal with that but the best part was that he didn’t have to. 

“I’m just gonna go get my gun,” Merle said, still using the strange soft voice that Shane hadn’t known he had. “And then I’ll come back, alright?”

Shane nodded slowly, and when Merle came back over to him and sat with his back against a tree and opened an arm for Shane, he didn’t even hesitate, just crawled over and curled into him, his head on Merle’s chest. 

“You go on and take a little siesta, señorita. You earned it,” Merle said. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Thank you,” Shane murmured, and his eyes fluttered shut and he sank into a dreamless sleep, the first time he’d shut his eyes without seeing nightmares behind his eyelids since the day he left Rick in the hospital. 

***

When Shane woke up later, the slant of the sunlight was different, and he had no idea how long he’d been lying with his face on Merle Dixon’s chest but however long it had been was about twice as long as he’d ever thought he would. He sat up slowly, disentangling himself from Merle’s handless arm, and pushed the sleeping bag off of his shoulders. 

“You’re up,” Merle said. “Good. I gotta take a monster piss and I was starting to think I was gonna have to cut the rest of my arm off too just to get you out from under it.”

Shane frowned at him but enough of the buzz was still there to take all the venom out of it. “What the hell was that?” he asked, hefting himself up to his feet. 

Merle stood up too and headed for a bush on the edge of the clearing. He paused in front of it and turned around to face Shane, holding his arms in front of him like he was holding on to someone’s hips and making lewd hip movements. “Sex, baby, what you think it was?”

Picking his shirt up off the ground where he’d thrown it earlier, Shane grumbled, “You know what I mean.”

The sound of liquid hitting leaves started up. Merle looked back at Shane over his shoulder and grinned. “Did ya like it?”

Shane shook the dust out of his shirt and pulled it on over his head. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “Yes. No. Maybe.”

“Well, let me ask an easier question, then,” Merle said. He bounced on the balls of his feet for a second and then zipped his pants up and turned around to look at Shane. “How do you feel?”

Shane crossed his arms and looked out into the forest, taking a mental inventory of himself. “Good,” he said finally. “Pretty good. Pretty _damn_ good, actually.” Merle gave him a shit-eating grin and Shane rolled his eyes. 

It wasn’t that he hadn’t known he was tense. It was the end of the world and everybody was tense, and Shane knew enough to recognize that in himself too. No, it was more that he hadn’t let himself believe or even hope that he would ever have a moment again where the tension was gone. And now that it was, his body felt almost alien to him--light and airy, fast, relaxed, good. His neck hurt where Merle had raked his teeth over it, but the bone-deep ache he’s just accepted as permanent was gone now. And it wasn’t just the release of sex, either, because he’d had that plenty of times since the walkers took over the world and it had always just wound him tighter. This was something different. 

Something that _Merle Dixon_ had done. 

Merle walked back over to Shane and clapped him on the shoulder, looking him in the eyes for a few seconds before nodding confidently. “You look better,” he said. “How ‘bout we head down to the creek and get washed up and then we can go check the snares and see about some grub?”

Shane nodded back, still feeling a little like his body was moving too slowly, too contently, but Merle didn’t seem to notice and the two of them headed off for the creek. 

***

The creek became a regular occurrence for them over the next few days. The farm was quiet and there weren’t any walkers that they could see, and there wasn’t really much else to do with their time other than set and check snares and poke the fire with sticks. Shane had waited, his body tense but his mind still pleasantly peaceful, for Merle to make another move, to force him to his knees again and use him like he had before, but other than a couple of heated glances, nothing had happened. Shane told himself that it was for the best. 

They found a swimming hole, a place where the water was about five feet deep and cold, clear enough to see the bottom but a little bit muddy like Georgia streams tended to be. Merle shrugged out of his vest and his shirt, then sat on a log and gingerly pulled the bandages off of his stump. Shane looked over, trying not to stare at the burned, puckered skin, only just beginning to heal. 

Merle saw him looking. “What you lookin’ at?”

Shane nodded at the stump. “Sorry, man. Just… does that hurt?”

“Like a motherfucker,” Merle said, wincing as he pulled off the last of the gauze. “I got some burn cream, though. Aloe vera. Takes the sting out.”

“Sorry about that,” Shane said. “I mean, wasn’t my fault. But still.” 

Merle grunted and peered at his injury. “Not as sorry as I am, man. Can’t even give the old balls a squeeze while I’m having quality time with myself, you know?”

Shane smiled, raising his eyebrows, and thought about offering to help out before he remembered that the other night was probably a one-time thing. “I can imagine,” he said. 

“Yeah, well, it’s healing,” Merle said. “Guess that’s all I can ask for, really.” He stood up and kicked off his shoes. “Mind if I skinny-dip? I’m getting tired of walkin’ back to camp with wet-ass skivvies.”

Shane reached down and hooked his thumb in his own belt, tilting his head down and his eyes up and giving Merle a cheeky smile. “Only if I can do the same.” 

Merle chuckled and undid his pants, pushing them down and stepping out of them with as much grace as a one-handed man could muster--which wasn’t much, as he ended up having to shimmy and twist and fight the pants all the way down. Shane just unbuckled his belt, took off his pants, and laid them over a log, trying not to flush at the thought of Merle looking at him in the buff.

Which was dumb, because it wasn’t like Merle hadn’t seen him naked already. More than naked, really--flushed, desperate, letting go. Shane turned and splashed into the water before his cock could take notice of the direction his thoughts were going. 

Merle produced a lumpy bar of soap from the little bag he was carrying with them and got in the water, and while they washed themselves there wasn’t much speaking, mostly because Merle kept singing “Fat Bottomed Girls” while he scrubbed his skin with soap and sand. Then the water slowly cleared again, the suds flowing off downstream, and Merle flipped up onto his back, floating lazily on the top of the water. 

Shane lifted his feet off of the bottom of the creek, letting himself tread water. “So your brother,” he said after the silence had stretched out a bit much. “You knew he was gay?”

“Yeah,” Merle said. “Little fucker wasn’t very good at hiding it. Well…” he turned his head, looked at Shane, “least not from me. I know the kid better than anybody and I could see it.” 

“I didn’t know,” Shane said, almost to himself, but Merle heard it. 

“It’s not always obvious to folks who don’t know him,” Merle said. “And besides, you seem to have a pretty shitty gaydar if you didn’t know your buddy Rick was queer too.”

Shane sighed heavily, working his jaw. “I knew.”

“You did, huh?”

“Well, the fact that he’s had his cock in my ass clued me in real good,” Shane said. His voice was quiet, but the sound carried over the water. “But whatever. Close quarters and all that, I guess.”

Merle chuckled. “I knew mine wasn’t your first dick. You was too good at sucking it for it to be your first.”

Shane frowned, looking off into the woods so that he’d have something to look at other than Merle floating on the water. “Well, it ain’t like I’ve had _lots_ of experience.”

“How much?” Merle asked. 

Sighing, Shane swam over to the bank and sat down on the log, putting his elbows on his knees and looking at the mud. “Rick, mostly. Off and on, over the years. Also this guy on the football team with me in high school. One man I picked up at a biker bar when I was drunk one New Year’s. And that’s about it.” He looked out at Merle again. “My woman history is much more impressive, I promise.”

Merle flipped off of his back and his legs sank in the water. “Ain’t interested in that.”

“What about you?” Shane asked. “Only fair that you tell me when I told you.” 

Merle shrugged. “Prison.” He splashed his way toward the bank. “Giving and receiving, although I liked the giving a lot more. And then this one asshole on the outside who told me he’d let me fuck him if I let him fuck me. So I did. And he didn’t reciprocate, the bastard. Lots of women, too, like you.” 

“Daryl said you got the clap on occasion,” Shane pointed out. 

Merle threw back his head and laughed. “Yep, and it was worth it every time. Don’t you worry your pretty little head though, baby. Ol’ Merle’s clean as a whistle right now.” He winked at Shane and walked the rest of the way out of the creek. 

Shane rolled his eyes. “You’re a cocky son of a bitch, ain’t you?”

Merle grinned and started thrusting his hips, causing his cock to swing around, dripping creek water. Shane laughed, dimples burrowing their way into his cheeks, and Merle’s eyes flashed with something that looked like heat when Shane ran his tongue over his top lip. 

“You know I got--” Merle started, then broke off, looking off into the woods. “Shit. Walkers.”

Shane was instantly on his feet, the switch in his head flipping from relaxed, happy Shane to the chilly, hyper-focused version of himself that he was growing to hate--the version of himself that had killed Otis and Randall and nearly killed so many others: Rick, Jenner, Daryl, Dale… He pushed that thought out of his mind and reached for his discarded pants, then pulled the big hunting knife out of his belt. When he looked back at Merle, the other man was brandishing his hatchet, his face hard and intensely cold. Their eyes met, and Merle motioned at the woods where four walkers were shuffling by. 

It didn’t look like the walkers had seen them yet, so Merle and Shane crouched down in unison, and Shane watched Merle while Merle watched the walkers. Then Merle gave him a signal that he really shouldn’t have understood, but something about the combination of trust and respect he had in Merle and the way Merle’s deep blue eyes still held him in sway made the meaning completely clear. _Stay back. I’ll go forward and you flank them._

Shane nodded and waited for Merle to charge the walkers, slamming his hatchet into the nearest one’s forehead without hesitation. While the other three were distracted by charging at the naked redneck bellowing at them and waving his hatchet, Shane moved quickly around behind them, body crouched down, close to the ground. 

Merle took out another walker, chopping its neck most of the way through and kicking it to the ground. Shane bounded up and stabbed his knife into the back of one of the other walker’s heads, and as the last one turned to reach for Shane, Merle took the opportunity to slice its head open as well. 

Their eyes met over the carnage and a flash of energy hit Shane’s bloodstream. He moved to the walker whose head had been mostly chopped off and stabbed it through the eye socket to finish it off. Adrenaline and anger and lust and regret spiked through Shane, the frustrations of everything washing over him, and suddenly his mind wasn’t his anymore and his hand tightened on the hilt of the knife. 

The walkers were all dead, for good this time, but at that moment they represented everything that was wrong with Shane’s life, everything that he’d lost and everything that he’d grown to hate, and he fell to his knees and started stabbing them, angry and wide-eyed and determined to hurt, to injure, to destroy. 

“Stop.” 

It was Merle’s voice, steel and gravel, and it bypassed everything in Shane’s mind and wrapped around his motor functions, stilling his hands around the knife hilt. Shane looked up at Merle and the fog around his head started to clear again. 

“Get up,” Merle ordered, with the utter conviction that Shane would obey him. This wasn’t the way Rick talked to him, like he was asking or begging or hoping that Shane would listen--Merle clearly had no doubt at all in his mind that he had the authority and that Shane would respect it. And he was right, somehow. “Get up and walk back to the creek.”

Shane climbed to his feet and headed for the creek. When they got to the bank, Merle ordered him to get in the water, rinse himself off, and Shane did it without question, even rinsing the gore off of his knife blade while he was there. 

“Come back up here and get on your knees,” Merle growled when Shane was clean again. Shane waded out of the water and slid down to his knees in front of Merle, and he stared down at Merle’s bare feet in front of him, the sandy mud from the creek sticking to his skin, and everything changed--rage to relief, calm to peace, frustration to contentment. Merle would take care of him, would make it okay, would give him the release he needed. Merle would bring him back to himself. 

Merle put his fingers on Shane’s chin and pulled it up so that Shane was looking into his eyes. “You’re gonna do what I say. Ain’t that right, baby?” 

“Yes,” Shane whispered, his cock hardening in the cool air by the water. 

“Good boy,” Merle said, circling around to the back of Shane. “Lean forward. Head on the ground.”

Shane did as he was told, bending forward and pressing his forehead into the soft mud. His breathing sped up and he put his forearms on the ground, clasping them in front of his head in a triangle. He heard Merle kneeling down behind him, felt Merle’s warm hand on the small of his creek-cooled back. 

“You fight when I tell you to fight,” Merle said, “and you stop when I tell you to stop. And you don’t _ever_ kill, not even a walker, without my permission. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Shane spoke into the darkness under his body. It was so much easier this way, giving control of all of the most frightening parts of himself to someone else. He’d tried that with Rick, and look where it had gotten them. But Merle was different somehow. His muscles started relaxing, his mind clearing even more even as everything around him faded except for his body and the mud and Merle behind him.

Merle used his handless arm to hook under Shane and pull his hips up in the air, then pressed his lips to the curve of Shane’s ass. “You remember the word,” he murmured, his lips moving against Shane’s skin.

“Yes,” Shane said again, and his response was the only word that mattered even though he remembered the one Merle was asking about. 

Merle grunted, spread Shane’s ass cheeks with his fingers, ran his thumb over the opening. “I’m gonna fuck you,” he said, soft but intense, and Shane couldn’t hold back a shudder of desire. 

And then Merle’s tongue was probing at him, slipping inside, and Shane’s cock twitched hard and he let out a strangled moan. “Merle..”

Merle’s tongue pulled out of him and Shane jumped as Merle slapped his ass hard. “No talking, bitch. You do what Merle tells you and nothing else. Comprendes?” 

Shane whimpered, dug his fingers into the mud above his head. “Yes.”

“Good,” Merle said. “Now that we understand each other…” He slipped his tongue inside again and started licking, teasing, pushing against places that made Shane’s whole body jerk involuntarily, and Shane felt himself slowly dissolving into nothing but the overpowering need to be filled up and ridden hard. Merle murmured against him, talking into Shane’s body with words that Shane couldn’t quite understand but didn’t need to because the way that Merle’s tongue felt against him was really all he needed to know. 

It wasn’t long before Shane was gasping, whining, trembling with desperation, his cock tingling but untouched, and he bit his lip hard enough that he tasted blood but it was the only way he could keep himself from begging, from saying Merle’s name and asking for what he needed. Only he wasn’t allowed to, and he was sure that Merle knew what he needed more than he did, anyway. 

Then Merle’s mouth moved away and Shane had no time to mourn the loss of it before Merle’s cock was at his entrance, pressing forward, and Shane groaned loudly and clawed at the mud for purchase, for something to hold onto to keep himself from flying apart. Merle’s cock was thick and there was a low, throbbing burn as he pressed inside, but Shane didn’t notice anything but the pleasure of it, the feeling of being whole. 

“You have a good ass,” Merle said as he pushed the rest of the way in, only stopping when his balls were pressed against Shane. He slowly pulled back and then thrust in again. “Tight and hot as fuck.”

Shane moaned and fought the urge to rock with him, to press back against him and try to take him even deeper. Merle’s dick brushed against his prostate with exactly the right touch, and Shane shuddered around him, tightening his muscles instinctively. 

Merle let out a soft groan and sped up, digging his fingers into Shane’s hip as he set up a hard, fast rhythm. “Let’s see if you can come just from my cock in your ass,” he said, the words coming short and clipped as he kept up his thrusts. “No touching yourself. You got it?” He slammed in especially hard and Shane screamed, his trembling legs threatening to give way. 

Merle laughed breathlessly and slapped Shane’s ass again. “You ain’t got to hold back, baby. Permission to come. Say my name.”

“Merle,” Shane said, then moaned loudly again. “ _Merle._ ” 

“Scream it,” Merle said, and his hand hit Shane’s ass cheek in the same place yet again. “Scream my name, motherfucker. Let Georgia know who’s fucking you.”

Merle grabbed Shane’s hip again and yanked his ass backwards at the same time that he slammed forward as hard as he could, and the sudden intense pressure of Merle’s cock on Shane’s prostate was enough to push him over the edge. He yelled Merle’s name, hearing it echo through the woods, and came apart under him, whimpering and gasping and biting his lip again to keep from saying too much. 

Merle kept fucking him for almost another full minute, pounding him with an occasional slap to his ass, and it was almost hotter than the rest of it as Shane sagged into the mud and let Merle use him hard, pressing his head into the mud over and over while Shane fought to keep his breath even, his body together, his heart from exploding. And then Merle dug his nails into Shane’s hip hard, breaking the skin, and pulled out quickly, and Shane’s cock stiffened slightly at the feeling of Merle’s heat pulsing over his back, landing against his skin in stripes. 

After a moment, Merle sat back, breathing hard. Shane stayed on the ground, slumped forward, focusing all of his attention on Merle kneeling behind him and the way that everything made sense again. 

***

Later, Shane was lying on his back at the campsite, watching the clouds through the pine needles while Merle sharpened the hatchet he’d used on the walkers. “How are you doing this?” Shane asked, quietly, without looking away from the sky. “Fixing me?”

“You ever had a dog, Pedro?” Merle said.

“We had a lab when I was a boy,” Shane answered. “Why?”

“Dogs are like people,” Merle said. “And people are like dogs. Different breeds need different training, you know?”

Shane thought about that for a moment. “I guess so.”

“So if you have a Shih Tzu,” Merle said, pronouncing it like he was intentionally saying _shit zoo_ instead of the breed name, “you’re gonna treat it a certain way. And if you have a rottweiler and you try to train it like a Shih Tzu, you’re gonna have a problem on your hands.”

Shane sat up, drawing his knees up and crossing his elbows on top of them. “That’s true.”

“See, the problem is that you’re a pitbull and everyone around you is trying to train a golden retriever,” Merle said. “You know anything about pitbulls, piggy-boy?”

“They’re dangerous,” Shane said, feeling a rush of shame at how right Merle was about him. “Unpredictable.”

Merle chuckled. “Ain’t no such thing as a bad pit, just a shitty pit trainer. That’s what people don’t understand. They ain’t dangerous or unpredictable if you train ‘em right. Sweetest things you ever saw. Loyal as fuck. But you can’t train ‘em like you do a lab or a fuckin’ Chihuahua.” 

Shane dipped his head, pressed his teeth lightly against the skin of his arm, bit down just slightly. He thought of the pitbulls he’d seen on the force, the half-starved ones chained to posts in back yards, snarling and angry and brutal, the sort of dog that should never be allowed around humans, that should never be trusted around them. The sort of dog that needs to be put down because there’s no hope of rehabilitating them. He wondered if he was that far along, if what Merle was doing was just a doomed effort. 

“Pits need to be controlled,” Merle continued. “Thing about pits is they don’t trust you just because you’re a nice guy or you have a pretty face. Pits trust you because they respect you. Because you control them. And thing is, you can’t be afraid of a pit. It knows, and it stops respecting you. And when that happens, you got a dangerous animal on your hands.” He stood up and walked over to Shane, then reached down and touched his chin again, pulling it up to meet his eyes like he had when Shane was on his knees, and Shane’s cock twitched in his pants at his growing conditioned response to the motion. 

Merle smirked at him. “That copper fuck you was with, he can’t control you because you don’t respect him no more. Because he’s been treating you like a cringing mutt instead of like a badass fired-up pitbull. And maybe everybody else responds to that, but you don’t, and you never will.” He tapped Shane’s cheek with his large, sure fingers and nodded. “And you shouldn’t. You’re better than that. But you need somebody to hold your leash and make sure you don’t run wild, boy. That’s what I’m doin’ for you.”

Shane’s eyes were snagged in Merle’s like cotton in a briar patch and he couldn’t look away. “Thank you,” he said. 

Merle smiled with one half of his mouth. “My pleasure, señorita. Now you take watch. I’m gonna go launch a couple ass rockets.”

“Fuck,” Shane said, laughing. “You go do your thing, man. Go do your thing.”

***

The woods were dark, pine-scented, and the crickets were chirping gleefully in the shadows. Shane was lying on his back in his sleeping bag staring at the moon through the branches, and it occurred to him that if he didn’t know better, it might seem almost like the world hadn’t ended, like the reason they were both going to sleep without a watch was because they were just two men camping and not because they’d set up a perimeter that intruders would be sure to trip. 

He’d finally come down from whatever high he’d been on since the last round of sex, although it really felt more like being gently pulled back to himself than like falling. He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, wondering how it was possible to be happy even for a moment in a world like this one.

“Knock it off, Pedro,” Merle muttered from his own sleeping bag a few feet away. “You’re thinkin’ so hard over there that it’s keeping me up.”

“Sorry,” Shane said, then furrowed his brow for a moment. “Can I ask you something?”

Merle grunted and Shane could hear him rustling around in his sleeping bag. “What?”

“It’s just something Dale said to me before he died,” Shane said. He shifted around and crossed his arms behind his head. “He said that this world--you know, the world now--he said it was good for me. That I belonged in it, you know?”

Merle grunted again. “And?”

“Well…” Shane sighed and closed his eyes. “Do you think he was right?”

“Difference does it make?” Merle muttered. “You’re here. You’re alive. Other than that, who gives a fuck?”

Shane rolled over onto his side to face Merle’s sleeping bag. “I do,” he said. “I don’t want to be the fucking psycho I’ve turned into.”

“Well, for one thing, you ain’t a fucking psycho no more,” Merle said, his blue eyes catching the moonlight and twinkling at Shane. “Ol’ Merle’s taking care of that. Don’t you worry.” 

Shane laughed quietly, breathlessly. “It’s working.”

“Course it is, baby. Just giving you a taste of the Merle. It’s good for whatever ails ya.” Merle rustled around some more until he was facing Shane too. “And anyway, for another thing, don’t you worry about being right for this world. Somebody’s gotta be, else we’d all just throw in the towel and adios humans. Might as well be you and me, you know?”

Shane thought about that for a few seconds. “I don’t think he meant it as a compliment,” he said finally. 

Merle scoffed audibly. “Dale’s a prick. He’s prob’ly just jealous of your sweet little Mexican ass.”

Shane raised his eyebrows. “Man, why do you keep saying that?”

“Sayin’ what, piggy-boy?”

“Mexican ass,” Shane said. “Calling me señorita. The chorizo bullshit.”

“Cause you’re a hot little Spanish number and Merle likes it,” Merle said, and the rustling that accompanied the words was obviously from thrusting hips. 

Shane was momentarily distracted by flashes of heat from his memories of earlier, but he managed to get his upper brain back online again. “You know I ain’t Hispanic, right?”

“You ain’t?” Merle asked, sounding genuinely surprised. “Huh. You sure?”

“Pretty sure,” Shane said. 

Merle was silent for a few seconds. “Eh, fuck it. I’m too used to it to change now. You just gonna have to get used to being my little Spanish Rose.”

Shane wrinkled his nose. “How ‘bout you _not_ call me that?”

“How ‘bout I call you whatever I want and you tell me you like it?” Merle waggled his eyebrows at Shane.

“You could just call me Shane, you know,” he said. “I figure if I’ve had your cock in my throat you can call me Shane.”

“Nah, baby, I don’t do names,” Merle said. “Complicates things. And ‘sides, you like it when I call you señorita. Admit it.”

Shane wrinkled his nose again and sighed. “I guess it’s not the worst thing you could call me.”

“Yeah, boy, you like it,” Merle said, grinning. “Now quit thinkin’ so hard and go to sleep.”

Shane turned over onto his side and pulled the rolled-up jacket he’d been using as a pillow under his head. Flashes of Dale, of Rick, of Lori came rushing into his brain, but Merle had told him not to think and so he wouldn’t. He listened for the sound of Merle breathing and used that to center himself, to bring himself back to the clearing in the woods and nowhere else, and he drifted off to sleep thinking about nothing but this. 

***

Merle unzipped one of the sleeping bags, holding the fabric with his teeth while he used his one hand to pull the zipper, and then spread it out on the ground near the fire. 

“Should we put the fire out?” Shane opened the bag they’d brought from their latest raid on one of the gas stations a few miles away and pulled out a small bottle of whiskey and a bag of salted peanuts that wasn’t too far past its expiration date. He paused, looking into the bag, and then pocketed one of the bottles of lube he’d raked off the shelf. After all, his buzz from the last sex they’d had-- hard and fast with Shane’s face digging into the bark of a tree--had started to wear off, and he already wanted it again, already wanted Merle deep inside him and the high that came afterwards when Merle finally let him come. 

Merle shrugged. “It’s a little nippy tonight. Might as well leave it burning for a little while at least.” He kicked off his shoes and lowered himself down to the sleeping bag, sitting with one knee up and his handless arm propped up on it. 

Shane sat down beside him and held out the bag of peanuts. Merle took the bag and popped a few peanuts in his mouth, chewing slowly and watching Shane as he sat down and took a swig of the whiskey. 

Shane made a face as the alcohol burned down his throat. “I keep thinkin’ somebody from the farm’s going to find us out here one of these days. Weird that it hasn’t happened yet.”

Merle chuckled. “It ain’t happened because Daryl keeps steering ‘em away whenever they start to come this direction.”

Shane raised his eyebrows and looked at Merle. “Daryl knows we’re here?”

Merle scoffed and rolled his eyes, then reached over to grab the bottle of whiskey from Shane and take a long drink from it. “Course he knows we’re here. Kid could track a butterfly fart through the fuckin’ rainforest. Ain’t hard for him to figure out there’s people camped out on the ridge.” 

Shane took a peanut from the bag and rolled it in his fingers. “Do you think he’s seen us?”

“Fucking? No,” Merle answered. He grinned at Shane and handed the whiskey bottle back. Shane took it and set it on the ground without taking a sip. 

“How can you be so sure?” Shane asked, his voice a little bit quieter than he expected it to be.

“I figure Daryl would come talk to me if he knows it’s me up here,” Merle said, watching Shane with sudden suspicion in his dark blue eyes. After a moment, he turned and looked back at the fire and away from Shane. “I figure he knows it’s you up here, though.”

“Me?” Shane asked, blinking. “Nah. If he thought it was me, I’d have an arrow through my eye.”

Merle didn’t say anything for a while, and after a long, awkward silence, Shane frowned. “Did you get bit or somethin’?” Shane asked, trying for a light teasing tone since he knew Merle hadn’t. 

Merle raised his eyebrow at Shane. “You got pretty familiar with my unmentionables not that long ago. Dontcha think you’d have seen a bite?”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “But it ain’t like you to be quiet when you don’t have a mouthful of rabbit.”

An ember floated away from the fire, and Merle reached up and caught it in his hand, staring at the ash once the glow had gone out. “Eh, it’s nothing, really. I start drinkin’ whiskey and I get all nostalgic. Thinkin’ about Daryl. ‘Bout how I should have been a better Dad to him since the one we had was an awful son of a bitch. ‘Bout how I wish he’d found somebody before the whole world went to shit.” He sighed heavily. “I guess he still could. Might still be love in the world, ya know? Maybe they got it stuffed in bottles down at the Shop-N-Save or some shit.”

Shane didn’t say anything, his mind whirling, and after a moment Merle picked up the whiskey bottle again. “Fuck, when did I turn into a pansy-ass idealist? Shit.” He tipped the bottle back and swallowed a mouthful of the dark amber liquid, then stretched his legs out and laid down on his back on the spread-out sleeping bag.

“You really believe that?” Shane asked. He laid back too, turned on his side, then propped his head up on his elbow and let his gaze rest on Merle. 

“Believe what, baby?” Merle said. He rolled onto his side to face Shane. 

“About love,” Shane said. “That any of us might find it. Hell, that it even exists anymore.”

Merle shrugged, his shoulder sliding against the ground. “Might as well, right? Ain’t like there’s much else to believe in nowadays.”

“You ever been in love?” Shane asked, dropping his eyes away from Merle’s and not really knowing why he did it. 

Merle grunted. “Waitress from Tuscaloosa. This woulda been, hell, twenty years ago. Didn’t go very well.”

“What happened?” Shane noticed a twig under his hip, poking him slightly. He decided to scoot forward to move himself off of it. It had nothing to do with want, he told himself. 

“Ain’t much to say,” Merle said. “Met her, loved her, fucked her. Talked about gettin’ hitched, even. Then I did eighteen months for possession and when I got out she’d changed her phone number.” He sighed, and his whiskey-scented breath drifted across Shane’s face. “Can’t say as I blame her, really. Prob’ly for the best. Hell, she was a pretty thing, though. All curves, you know? Not like the bony bitches we got running around these days.” 

“You still love her?” Shane asked. 

“Nah,” Merle answered. He reached for the mostly-empty bottle of whiskey and took a swig from it without sitting upright, and some of the liquid dribbled down his chin. “I mean,” he continued, wiping some of the alcohol away. “Used to think about her from time to time. Wonder how she was doing, that sort of thing. Sorta hope she died a long time ago so she didn’t have to live like this, ya know? But I ain’t loved her in years. No sense in it, really.”

Shane considered that for a few moments, letting the whiskey he’d already drunk unfocus his eyes so that Merle’s face blurred in front of him. He thought of Rick and the night from before the apocalypse that they’d spent together in Atlanta after the Braves game, one of the only times their relationship had involved a bed instead of a quick hand job in a police car. Rick’s hands on his skin, Rick inside him, Rick moving back to his own queen-sized bed when it was over and leaving Shane staring at the ceiling and hoping with everything in him that one day it would be more than that. 

“Can’t decide if I still love him or not, you know?” Shane heard himself say. 

Merle grunted again. “If you have to wonder, then you don’t.”

“I don’t know,” Shane said. “I mean… sometimes I think about him and I want to gank the son of a bitch and watch him die real slow. And then other times…” He trailed off and shrugged. 

“Why do you love him?” Merle asked. He shifted and they were closer now, close enough that whispers could bridge the distance.

“Rick?” Shane asked. He sighed and laid his arm down on the ground to put his head on it. “I’ve loved him since we were in high school, you know? He was such a character back then, always makin’ mischief and blaming me for it, and he always had such a great laugh. And then even when he got together with Lori, he always had time for me. We were…” He broke off, took a breath, tried again. “We were happy. Even with her looming over us.”

“Yeah, fine,” Merle said after Shane fell silent again. “That’s why you used to love him. Why do you love him now?”

Shane looked at Merle, cornflower and bluebonnet and leather, and fought back the sudden urge to trace the man’s rough jaw with the tips of his fingers. He’d done that to Rick, once, in the hotel. Rick had just smiled at him with sadness in his eyes and then rolled away. “I don’t know, to be honest with you. I guess I just… always have.”

“Well, that’s dumb as a brick-shitting hobo on crack,” Merle said, making a face. “You can’t love somebody just out of _habit_.”

“You’re right,” Shane said, then laughed under his breath. “Who knew that Merle Dixon was gonna turn out to be right about shit?”

“I always knew it, baby, you just ain’t been paying attention.” Merle grinned at him. 

Shane rolled his eyes and drew a long breath, letting it out slowly while he tried to relax. It was easier with Merle so close to him. “And I especially shouldn’t care about that asshole when he tried to stab me.”

Merle’s eyes narrowed. “He tried to kill you?” His voice was dark, like it was coming from a place deeper than his lungs.

“Well, to be fair, I did have a gun pointed at his face at the time,” Shane pointed out. 

“That rat bastard tried to _kill_ you,” Merle said again, working his jaw. 

“He didn’t, though,” Shane pointed out, and his fingers twitched to reach for Merle’s waist before he remembered not to do that. “And I probably would have deserved it if he had.”

Merle watched Shane closely for a few seconds. “Well, fuck that right in the ass,” he growled, then reached over and grabbed the back of Shane’s head, pulling it the rest of the way over to him. And then suddenly their lips met, whiskey-flavored and hungry, and Shane felt his entire body splinter into shards of adrenaline and lust until there was nothing left in the world but Merle’s mouth on his and the pounding of his heart. 

Merle put his hand on Shane’s side and ran it down toward the waist of his khakis, slightly calloused fingers against smooth tanned skin, then tugged at the material. “Take your pants off, lover boy.”

Shane sucked in a quick breath as Merle’s fingers traced sparks over his stomach, causing all the muscles in his abs to jump under his touch. “Merle…”

Merle cut him off by kissing him again, hard and deep, then pulled back enough to growl against his lips. “You know the rules. Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.” He pushed Shane onto his back and then pulled away to struggle with his own pants fastenings. 

Shane bit back an embarrassing whimper when Merle’s mouth left his. He reached down and shoved his pants down his legs, hissing when the zipper raked over his already hard cock, then reached in the pocket for the bottle of lube before throwing the khakis off to the side and whipping his shirt off over his head. 

Merle finished unfastening his pants and pulled himself out but didn’t take off the rest of his clothes. He grabbed the bottle from Shane and put it in his mouth, popping open the tab with his thumb and then squeezing the bottle with his teeth to coat his fingers with the liquid. Shane moaned and lifted his hips.

“Damn, you’re a little whore for me, aren’t you, señorita?” Merle asked, leaning over Shane and nipping at his jaw. “Just for me, right?” 

Shane dug his nails into the blanket underneath him and his whole body arched when Merle slid a finger into him. God, he loved this, the feel of Merle’s fingers inside him, the way the man knew exactly where to touch to make him come apart at seams he didn’t know he had. Loved how with Merle this was part of the seduction instead of just a necessary preparation. Loved how Merle made him feel sexy, filthy, wanted, like there was nowhere else he wanted to be when he was with Shane.

“That was a question, baby. Answer it.” Merle pulled back and then added a second finger, rubbing over Shane’s prostate with just the perfect amount of pressure to rip an involuntary whimper out of Shane’s chest. “Are you like this with anybody else but me?”

“No,” Shane breathed. His hands were starting to shake with the desperate need to give everything up to Merle, to be _taken_. “Nobody but you.”

“Good,” Merle barked. “Because you’re _mine_ , you understand me? You’re Merle Dixon’s horny little bitch and you love it.”

Shane nodded, and it was all he could do to be obedient and keep his hands from tangling in Merle’s shirt and pulling him down to him. Merle pumped his fingers in and out of Shane, slowly at first but gradually going faster and matching the speed of Shane’s breath. Finally, when every muscle in Shane’s body was shaking from the effort it took not to explode just from Merle’s fingers in his ass, Merle pulled out and started pouring lube on his own cock. 

Shane started to roll over onto his stomach, to lift his ass in the air and press his forehead to the ground while he waited to be filled up like always, but Merle laid his handless arm down on Shane’s abs and stopped him. Shane looked at him, a question in his eyes. 

“Not this time, baby,” Merle said. “This time I got shit to say and I want you to look me in my baby blues while I say it.”

Shane met his eyes, then nodded and opened his legs wider to let Merle move and settle between them. Merle ran his thumb over Shane’s slick entrance, sending a shiver of energy through Shane’s body. “You ready for me?” Merle asked. 

Shane groaned as he felt Merle’s thumb move away to be replaced by the tip of Merle’s dick. Merle paused there, waiting for an answer, and as soon as Shane nodded, he pushed his way in. Shane held Merle’s eyes with his own, swallowing hard and arching his back with a whimper as Merle bottomed out inside him.

Merle chuckled, only a little breathlessly. “You’re sexy as hell when you take my cock, baby.” He ran his nails down the center of Shane’s chest, but softly this time, not hard enough to leave a mark like he had done on several occasions. “Say my name. Tell me who’s about to fuck you.” He pulled out a little and then thrust back in.

“Merle,” Shane said, fighting to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. Merle had told him to look him in the eyes, and Merle would get what he wanted. 

Merle pulled out again, farther this time, and then pushed forward. “Merle who?”

Shane cried out and shuddered at the thrust. “Merle Dixon,” he said, squirming under him to try and take him even deeper. 

“Do you want Merle Dixon to fuck you?” 

“ _Yes_ ,” Shane gasped as Merle slammed into him again. Merle’s eyes were hard stone, glittering tanzanite with the campfire reflected in them, and Shane gave himself up to them as he always did, feeling the tension and the fear and the rage melt away from his bones and be replaced by the now-familiar sense of calm and contentment, of disconnecting from the rest of the world and tying all of his synapses to just this, just this moment, just this feeling. 

Merle grunted in approval and started up a rhythm, pulling out with excruciating slowness only to pound back in hard and fast, and Shane’s cock hadn’t even been touched yet but he was sure that at any moment he was about to disintegrate into tiny pieces--pieces that Merle would collect and reassemble like he always did.

“Now you listen to me and you listen good,” Merle growled out, grabbing Shane’s chin and holding it steady as he continued fucking him, in fast and out slow. “That bastard don’t deserve you. None of ‘em do.” He thrust forward and held there for a moment, rocking his hips against Shane’s. “You’re worth fifty of any one of those assholes.”

Shane moaned, feeling his lips and his tongue curl around Merle’s name even though he wasn’t allowed to speak it. 

Merle let go of Shane’s chin and traced his fingers down over Shane’s throat, down his chest, over his abs. “He don’t get this anymore,” Merle said, his voice like gunpowder. “He don’t get to see you like this. He don’t get to make you fall apart for him like I do.” He wrapped his fingers around Shane’s cock and gave it a stroke that made Shane gasp. “He was a damn fool to give this up.”

Shane stared up at Merle, his breaths coming hard like sobs even though there weren’t tears and maybe never would be again as long as he had this, as long as Merle kept taking everything away from him and only giving back the good parts. Merle leaned down, hooked his bad arm under Shane’s back, and pulled him up so that Merle could reach his mouth. He nipped at Shane’s lips with his teeth, then dragged his mouth up to the side of Shane’s head. 

“He don’t make you happy,” Merle rasped, his lips against the curve of Shane’s ear. “And I’ll be damned if I’ll let you spend one more second of your life waiting on _Rick Grimes_ to love you. You hear me?” His thrusts were slower now, deeper, smoother, and Shane’s cock was caught between their stomachs like a firefly in a jar. 

“I hear you,” Shane whispered, then barely had time to suck in a breath before Merle’s mouth was on his again, his tongue rocking into Shane’s mouth to mirror the cock rocking into his body, and Shane’s skin prickled with heat like the whole forest was on fire around them. 

“Ah, shit, fuck the rules this time,” Merle murmured against Shane’s lips. “Just touch me.” 

Shane’s hands flew up to Merle’s neck almost without his own permission, flattening against his skin there and pressing his thumbs lightly against the pounding pulse in Merle’s throat. He wrapped his legs around Merle’s waist and started rocking with him, meeting Merle’s slow, deep rhythm with his own hip movements. Merle moved his good hand down to Shane’s hip and dug his fingers in, speeding up his thrusts and causing Shane’s whole body to shudder every time his cock hit just the right spot. 

“Yes,” Shane gasped out when the kiss broke. “Merle, God, yes.” He moved his hands away from Merle’s neck and slid them around his back, grabbing Merle’s shirt in his fists and yanking it off over the man’s head so that he could feel everything, skin-to-skin. He raked his nails over Merle’s back and bit down on Merle’s shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut and letting himself just _feel_. 

“Fuck, you feel good,” Merle muttered, then moved his mouth down to the curve where Shane’s neck met his shoulder and sucked hard on the skin there. 

“ _Harder_ ,” Shane said, tightening his body and his legs around Merle. “Fuck me. God, please.”

Merle paused for a moment, shifting for a better angle, and then started fucking Shane harder, deeper. Shane yelled out and threw his head back, and Merle licked his Adam’s apple and moaned with him. 

“Come for me, baby,” Merle said, breathless and almost pleading. “Come on, baby, do it now.” His lips claimed Shane’s again but the kiss was broken into staccato bursts by gasping breaths and desperate noises. Shane moved his hips so his cock slid once on Merle’s stomach, then Merle hit him just right one more time and Shane’s brain shorted out, his body bowing like electricity, and the warm wetness spread over their stomachs while Shane clung to Merle’s body like they’d been welded together.

“Fuck yes,” Merle rasped out. His thrusts started becoming irregular, jerky, and when he tried to pull all the way out as he’d done every time so far, Shane tightened his legs around Merle’s waist and tried to hold him in. 

“Stay with me,” Shane begged, meeting Merle’s eyes and holding them. “Stay.”

“ _Shane_ ,” Merle gasped, and then his climax hit him, rolled over him like a wave, and Shane moaned as he felt heat fill him, as Merle thrust farther in so that he was as deep as he could possibly be while he finished. 

They stayed like that, connected and clutching at each other, for several seconds while their breathing calmed down. Finally, after Shane’s legs started shaking with the effort of holding Merle to him, Merle pulled out carefully and sat back on his knees. Shane slumped into the ground, still breathing hard, and stared up at the stars between the tree branches. 

“Well,” Merle said, his voice rough like whitewater, “I guess that settles _that_.”

Shane stretched, his slick skin rubbing over the cheap sleeping bag material like it was an expensive goosedown comforter. “Settles what?”

“You and Officer Friendly, señorita,” Merle said. He pulled a bandana out of his back pocket and cleaned himself up with it before tucking himself back in his pants and zipping them up. “Pretty sure I just fucked him out of you.”

Shane laughed softly and licked his lips. “You fucked something out of me, alright.”

Merle grunted and then picked up Shane’s clothes in a ball and tossed them at him. “You better get dressed. You keep layin’ there all spread out like a fuckin’ country buffet and I’m gonna be back in your ass before it has time to tighten back up again.”

Shane rolled his eyes but sat up and made himself presentable again. Merle dug around in their food stores and pulled out a shrink-wrapped package of beef jerky and tossed it to Shane. “There you go, Rosie,” Merle said. “Get your strength back up for later.”

Shane opened the beef jerky and pulled a bite off with his teeth. Merle took a package for himself and sat down across the clearing from Shane, chewing on it thoughtfully and watching Shane with eyes that flickered in the firelight. 

***

The next morning, Rick walked into the campsite. 

After another round of surprisingly slow sex the night before, Shane and Merle had zipped the two sleeping bags together and drifted off to sleep next to each other. Now Shane was awake, his naked body curled around Merle’s fully clothed one, his head on Merle’s chest and the brightness of the morning swirling around the two of them while Merle snored softly and Shane tried to remember if anything had ever felt this perfect before. He was just about to wake Merle, to kiss him now that kissing was on the table and give himself up to him again, let Merle take him in the morning sun and turn the sparse campsite into a home again. 

And then someone tripped the noise alarms at the edge of the perimeter and Merle sat up straight, pulling Shane up with him. “Put on some pants, señorita. We got company.” 

Shane scrambled out of the sleeping bag and found his pants, wadded up against a tree at the edge of the clearing. He pulled them back on and just barely had them zipped when Rick came into view, Daryl close behind him with his crossbow at the ready. 

Merle started struggling to his feet and Shane went over to him, offering a hand to help pull him up. Their hands stayed together for a beat longer than necessary once Merle was standing up beside Shane, and then they both took a step away from each other. 

Rick walked up, his familiar swagger back in his step, and Shane set his jaw and looked at the man, seeing him clearly for the first time in years. A good man, a strong man, even an attractive man, but not the paragon of perfection that Shane had always thought he was, at least back before the monster had slithered into his brain and turned everything dark and angry. The monster that Merle had gotten rid of, that he kept getting rid of a little more every day. 

Daryl was just a step behind Rick, holding his crossbow low but ready, the bolt of it pointing at Shane’s midsection. He kept his eyes on Shane but his body primed toward Rick’s. 

Merle hooked his thumb in his belt and chuckled. “Well, good morning, little brother. Fine day for a little family reunion, eh?”

Daryl responded with a quick flick of his eyes over to Merle and an almost imperceptible jerk of his head. “Merle.”

“Shane,” Rick said. “We need to talk.” He glanced at Merle. “Alone.”

Merle chuckled. “Aw, now, you and Pedro don’t need to talk all by yourselves. You’ll sprain your cocks with all the waving ‘em at each other you’ll do. Better to discuss as a group, dontcha think?” He looked at Daryl for support.

Daryl stood there, swaying slightly and turning his eyes toward Rick. “You got your gun?”

“Yeah,” Rick murmured, turning his head back toward Daryl but keeping his eyes on the ground. “I’ll be fine.” He looked up at Shane. “Shane ain’t gonna hurt me, right?”

Shane ground his teeth a bit but nodded. “Right. Scout’s honor.”

“Alright, then,” Rick said. He headed off into the trees a bit and Shane followed. They stopped a few yards away, out of hearing distance but still within sight of the Dixon brothers. Shane felt Daryl’s eyes boring into the exposed skin of his back, but he refused to acknowledge it. 

“What do you want, Rick?” Shane said, looking at the ground and running his tongue over his bottom lip. 

“I need your help,” Rick said. He spread his hands in front of himself. “You know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need you.” 

Shane kept his gaze on the ground and shook his head. “You don’t need me, Rick. Let’s not kid ourselves here.”

“I do,” Rick said. “We have to go back to the high school. Hershel needs some more supplies that the pharmacy don’t have and he thinks that FEMA trailer will. You’re the only one who knows the layout except for Maggie and Beth, and Hershel won’t let them go. And I wouldn’t ask ‘em to, either, not after...” He trailed off and didn’t say Otis’s name even though it hung in the air between them like poison.

Shane bit his bottom lip and looked up at Rick finally. “Fine. I’ll draw you a map.”

“I need you to go with us,” Rick said, meeting Shane’s dark brown eyes with his blue ones, and Shane thought of Merle and how his eyes were darker, truer somehow. “We just don’t have the manpower to go without you. And it’s gotta be done.” 

“And what do I get in return for helping you, huh?” Shane demanded. “You try to stab me in the chest again?” He turned and looked back out at Merle, who was deep in quiet conversation with Daryl. 

“Guns, if we find some,” Rick said, his voice still calm. “Part of whatever supplies we get. And, Shane.” He waited until Shane looked at him again. “Forgiveness.”

“I don’t need your damn forgiveness,” Shane said, even though part of him thought maybe he did. “You and me, whatever we were, it’s through. I’m cutting ties.”

“Then why are you still here?” Rick asked. He stepped forward, into Shane’s personal space but not nearly as close as he used to get. “Why are you still here, Shane?”

Shane looked back at Merle again, and their eyes met for a second before Merle turned back to Daryl. “That’s none of your damn business.” 

Rick was silent for a few seconds, following Shane’s line of sight and then raking over Shane’s bare chest. “You fucking him?”

Shane laughed incredulously, reaching up and rubbing his hand over his own scalp. “And that is really none of your damn business.”

“You sure about that? Merle Dixon?” Rick asked. 

“Like you can say anything.” Shane crossed his arms and set his jaw. 

“I’m just not sure he’s right for you, is all,” Rick said. “Merle Dixon.”

Shane let out a huff of breath through his nose. “You got no idea what’s right for me and what ain’t. And besides, I’m not admitting anything here. Just pointing out that you lost the right to have anything to say about my life when you tried to end it.”

“You tried to shoot me,” Rick said, then paused. “ _More than once_.” 

Shane sighed and ran his hand over his head again. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

Rick watched him for a second, then nodded his forgiveness, his acceptance, his friendship. “So will you come?”

Shane looked across the clearing at Merle again. This was what he wanted, what he needed. Merle’s hand on his leash and the way he looked in the firelight. Not Rick, never Rick. Never again. 

“If you won’t do it for me,” Rick said, softly. “Do it for Carl.”

Shane still didn’t say anything, watching Merle and Daryl talk, the way Daryl’s fingers twitched on his crossbow every time he looked over at Shane, the way Merle wouldn’t ever let anything happen to either of them.

“Shane,” Rick said, using his best intense leader voice. “You owe me. After everything you did. You owe me and you know it.”

Shane stood there, still watching Merle, for several seconds. “Fuck you, man,” he said finally, but Rick knew it for the agreement it was. “Let me go tell Merle. Take your little crossbow bitch and go back to the farm and I’ll meet you there.”

Rick’s jaw twitched at the insult to Daryl, but he nodded and Shane waited until the two of them left before walking over to Merle. Their eyes met and Shane suddenly couldn’t think of anything to say.

Merle’s face was tight, closed-off. “You’re going with him.” It wasn’t a question, and Shane didn’t answer it. “You oughtta see your eyes right now, señorita. Lost as fuck, just like before.”

“I have to go,” Shane said. “Merle. I have to.”

“You ain’t gotta do nothing he tells you to do,” Merle said. “Tell him to go fuck himself. Or better yet, tell him to go let my brother fuck him. That’ll get both of ‘em out of our hair.”

“Is that what you want me to do?” Shane asked, looking down at the ground.

Merle worked his jaw for a moment and then pulled Shane against him, wrapping his arms tightly around Shane’s waist and back and holding him there, wordless and angry, his arms shaking with it. 

Shane’s throat closed up a little as he let himself have a few seconds of warm, hard muscle against his chest. “I owe him. I owe him this.”

“Do you love that son of a bitch? Still?”

Shane squeezed his eyes shut. “Merle…” 

“You need to love somebody who puts a fire in your gut,” Merle growled into Shane’s ear. “And that ain’t him and you know it.”

Shane pressed his forehead against Merle’s shoulder. “Is it you?”

“Hell, I don’t fuckin’ know. It’s your gut,” Merle said. He tightened his fingers in Shane’s shirt for a fleeting moment and then let go and stepped back away from him. 

“If you tell me to stay,” Shane said, meeting Merle’s eyes, blue like regret, “I’ll stay.”

“I ain’t your master, Pedro. Pen door’s open. You gotta make your choice.” Merle stuck his hand in his pocket and spat on the ground.

Shane ran a hand over his own scalp and licked his lips. “If you tell me you want me to stay, I’ll stay.”

“I know you will,” Merle said, kicking a bit of dirt over the place where he’d spit. “That’s why I ain’t tellin’ you any such thing. It’s your call, man. It’s gotta be your call.”

Shane threw his head back and stared up at the white sky through the trees, clasping his hands behind his head and biting his lower lip. “Come with me,” he said, then looked back down at Merle. “That’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna come with me. Stay at the farm until Rick and I get back and then we’ll stay there. Together. Me and you.” He nodded decisively. “Yeah. You’re gonna come with me.”

“Nah, I ain’t,” Merle said. “You go back, he’ll have you again. Wrapped around his pig finger like always. And I ain’t gonna sit there watching you sniffing after his lily ass all day. No way. Ol’ Merle’s just gonna stay here in the woods where he belongs.”

Shane dipped his head and looked up at Merle without lifting it again, biting his bottom lip. "It ain't gonna be like that."

“It’s gonna be exactly like that,” Merle said. “I ain’t had long enough to get him out of you. Not all the way.” 

Sighing heavily, Shane tried to think of Carl, of how much he really did owe Rick for all the terrible things he’d said and done. Of Otis, dead on the pavement in front of the high school, and of how he needed to be the one to give him a kill shot if he was walking when they got there. Of closure. Of letting go. “I’ll come back,” he said, quietly, meeting Merle’s eyes again and trying to convince him through the look that he meant it.

“Yeah, sure,” Merle said. He crossed his arms and took another step back. “Well, go on, then. Go do what you gotta do.”

Shane reached for him, pulled him back in, put his forehead against Merle’s. “I’ll come back,” he said again.

Merle sighed and pushed him away. “Just stay safe, you hear? Don’t let the walkers get you.”

“Shane,” Rick’s voice echoed in the woods and Shane ground his teeth. 

“I’ll be back,” he said one more time.

“Bye, baby,” Merle said. “Catch you on the flip side.”

Shane nodded, paused, opened his mouth, then closed it again and followed Rick and Daryl back to the farm.

***

The mission to the high school went well, at least in the sense that Rick, Daryl, and Shane all survived it--although not without injury. It was dark when Rick and Daryl dragged Shane back into the farmhouse and laid him down on the bed that had come to be the sick bed for the group. Shane fought them, cursed, yelled, tried to get up and walk away, but finally he consented to letting Hershel look at his leg. 

“Hurry up,” Shane snapped at Hershel. “I got shit to do.”

“What happened?” Hershel said, mostly to Rick because Shane hadn’t exactly been good at answering his questions so far.

“Tripped over a curb while we were running through the parking lot,” Rick said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We got attacked. Figured it was best to run instead of stick around. And then he tripped. Same ankle.”

“No shit,” Shane hissed. “Splint it up so I can go.”

Hershel fixed Shane with a condescending glare. “You can’t go nowhere, boy. Not for a few days, at least.”

“Screw that,” Shane said, trying again to push everyone away and climb out of the bed. 

Rick said Daryl’s name, quietly, and Daryl grabbed Shane and held him down, curling his lip like touching Shane was disgusting to him, and this was a man who’d chopped off walker ears and worn them as a necklace, so the look gave Shane a good idea of how Daryl felt about him.

“It’s not broken,” Hershel said, “but since this is the second injury you’ve had to it in less than a month, you need to stay completely off of it or else you’ll risk permanent damage.”

“I said _screw that_ ,” Shane yelled. “I have to go. Now.” 

“Daryl,” Rick said again, and Daryl held Shane down harder, his forearm pressing into Shane’s neck. Shane struggled against him unsuccessfully, and then he felt cold metal close around his wrist. 

Shane’s mouth fell open and he looked up at Rick, dumbfounded. “Oh _hell_ no,” he said. “You did _not_ just cuff me to this bed.”

Rick crossed his arms and glared. “I’m not letting you hurt yourself.”

“Rick,” Shane said, and he quickly turned off the venom in his voice and went for pleading, nice. “Rick, buddy, don’t do this to me. I gotta go. I gotta go back.”

“We’ll see how you are tomorrow,” Rick said. He motioned at everyone and they all left the room, Daryl waiting at the door until Rick turned around and followed him out. 

***

“DARYL,” Shane yelled. He pulled hard against the handcuff holding him to the bed, but of course it didn’t give. Of course not. If there was any give to the damn cuffs from the King County Sheriff’s Department, Merle would still have both hands. “DARYL.” 

It was early the next morning, and although Shane had finally drifted off to sleep from sheer exhaustion at some point in the night, he was awake again before breakfast. Maggie appeared in the doorway and leaned against the doorframe, glaring at him. “Daryl’s not here. And you’re gonna need to shut up before somebody decides to gag you.”

“Where the fuck is he?” Shane said, the words shooting from his mouth hard and fast like bullets. “I need to talk to him. Get him the fuck in here.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Maggie said. “Outside somewhere.”

“ _Get him the fuck in here_ ,” Shane said again, yanking viciously at the handcuff and feeling the old familiar rage start coming over him, coating his skin, calming him in all the wrong ways. 

“I’ll send Glenn out to see if he can find him.” Maggie pushed away from the doorframe and gave him one last withering glare before disappearing. 

Shane struggled with the cuffs again, thrashing around on the bed, thinking of blood and death and pain and the way Merle must have felt on that roof, and when this was over he was going to take every damn pair of handcuffs Rick had--seriously, how many could that be?--and destroy the fuck out of them somehow. That bastard would never cuff another man to something again.

His wrist started to hurt, to sting, the skin tearing where the metal touched it while Shane tried to pull himself out of it. He captured his bottom lip in his teeth and strained, pulling hard, and then when nothing happened he slumped forward with a bellow of frustration. 

Rick was dead. He’d kill him. And that bastard Daryl too…

_Don’t you fucking dare threaten my baby brother, you hear me?_

Shane stilled at the thought of Merle’s voice, of the conviction in it. Of the way this had all really started, the moment when everything had changed. Merle had done more than just fuck him--he’d given Shane his humanity back, and Shane was suddenly overcome with the need to keep it. 

He laid back on the bed, systematically relaxing his muscles, and thought of Merle. 

***

It was hours later when Daryl walked into the room, his eyes narrowed, watching. He leaned against the wall across from the bed, crossed his arms, and didn’t say anything. 

Shane tugged at the handcuffs again, but with less energy this time--mostly to emphasize his words and not to try to get free. “Daryl. Let me loose, man.”

“Nope,” Daryl said. He didn’t move at all other than his lips, not even a twitch of a muscle. 

“Come on,” Shane said. “Come on, man. He’ll listen to you. Tell him to let me go.” 

“Nope,” Daryl said again. 

Shane groaned loudly with frustration. “I gotta go back, man. I told him I would.”

Daryl just watched him silently for several seconds before speaking. “Yeah, well, Merle’s a tough old bastard. I’m sure he’ll get over it.”

“Get over what?” Shane asked, twisting around to a more comfortable position. 

“You,” Daryl answered. “And anyway, he’s gone. Went back to tell him you were okay and wasn’t nothin’ there but a burned-up sleeping bag and a note stuck to a tree.”

Shane blinked at him, his mouth hanging open. “Burned-up sleeping bag…” 

“He’s alright,” Daryl said. “Looked intentional. ‘Sides, if I thought he wasn’t okay I’d have put an arrow in your eyeball long time ago.” He lowered his voice and muttered, “Prob’ly still should.”

“A note,” Shane said, struggling to sit up. “For who? For me?”

“Yeah,” Daryl said. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a folded-up sheet of paper. “You ain’t gonna like it, though.” He tossed it at Shane and didn’t offer to help as Shane tried to unfold it with one hand. 

Merle’s handwriting was large, blocky, nearly illegible--the handwriting of a man who has to write with his non-dominant hand and who probably wasn’t used to writing anything longer than a grocery list anyway. It looked like him, and Shane felt his heart go haywire until he read the words. 

Shane looked back up at Daryl. “He’s _gone._ ” 

“Yep.” 

“He _left_ me,” Shane said, staring at the note like the words would change if he willed it hard enough. “He left me here. With you fucks.”

Daryl just shrugged and didn’t say anything. 

“He thinks I’m in love with Rick,” Shane said, his mouth hanging open with disbelief. 

“Are you?” Daryl asked, quietly. 

Shane looked up at him. “No,” he said. “I mean… I used to be. Ain’t no use in denying that. But no, not anymore.” Daryl was silent again, and it suddenly irritated Shane. “Why don’t you just say what you’re thinking, huh? Stop being so damn close-mouthed about everything.”

“I’m thinkin’ you’re a fuckin’ prick who needs a pickaxe in the skull,” Daryl snapped back, swaying from side to side with his distinctive aggressive posture. “I’m thinkin’ you tried to kill Rick and I don’t trust you with his life anymore. And that means I don’t trust you with my brother’s life neither. So you asking me to let you go is a fucking joke to me. That’s what I’m thinking.”

“Daryl,” Shane said, pleading. “Come on, man. I ain’t gonna do nothing to hurt Merle. Or Rick. But especially not your brother.”

“You already did, jackass,” Daryl said, nodding at the note. “Whatever you said to him before you left _obviously_ made him think you wasn’t planning on goin’ back.”

“Daryl, you gotta _find_ him, man,” Shane begged. “You gotta find him and tell him.”

“Tell him what, exactly? That you ain’t got Rick’s cock anymore and so you need a replacement?”

Shane ground his teeth. “It ain’t like that.”

“You telling me you’re in love with my brother?” Daryl’s eyes glinted, blue like Merle’s but the two-dollar knockoff version of the real thing. 

Shane just stared at him, frowning, for a long time. 

“Fuck you, man,” Shane said, finally.

Daryl tightened his crossed arms. “I’ll see if Rick will let me go look for him.”

“You always do what Rick tells you?” Shane spat out. 

“You always do what _Merle_ tells you?” Daryl shot back. Shane didn’t answer, so he continued. “Besides, not respectin’ the chain of command’s what got you in this mess to begin with, so you best shut your mouth if you want my help.”

Shane thought about Merle, about the way it had felt to wake up next to him, wrapped in his arms. He looked at Daryl and nodded. 

***

Shane laid in the bed for two days, only being let loose for heavily guarded trips to the bathroom, and spent most of his time trying not to think about what Merle was doing, where he was, if he was even alive. Daryl came by the room a few times, not saying anything, just catching Shane’s eye and shaking his head. 

Rick almost never stopped in, which didn’t bother Shane as much as it would have before. He needed to tell Merle that, somehow. Tell him that the only reason Shane had thought of Rick at all over the two days he was stuck there was because Rick was the one with the key to the handcuffs. Tell him that the only reason he hadn’t tried to fashion a makeshift hacksaw and then bust out of the house was because Merle only had one hand and so it was important that Shane kept both of his, or else there would be no one who could set snares and skin squirrels once they were back out in the woods again, where they both belonged. 

And then, finally, in the middle of the night when the house was dark and quiet, Lori showed up holding a pair of crutches. “Don’t you dare tell Rick I did this,” she said, quietly, not looking Shane in the eyes. 

Shane stared at her. “Did what?”

She looked back toward the door, then crossed the room on quiet feet and opened her hand, showing Shane a tiny silver key. “They got no right keeping you here, Shane. Not when you don’t wanna be.” She reached up and unlocked the handcuffs. 

Shane jerked his wrist back and rubbed at it. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

Lori reached out and put her palm against his cheek. “Because I guess I’m in the habit of letting my men go off and have their gay love affairs these days,” she said, smiling with only a little sadness. “Now listen. Hershel said you could walk if you use crutches and take it slow. Don’t make me regret doing this.”

Shane reached up, grabbed Lori’s face in his hands, and planted a long kiss on her forehead. “Thank you. Lori. _Thank you._ ” 

“Good luck,” she said, and she left Shane to his crutches. 

***

Walking through the forest with crutches was definitely not something Shane ever thought he’d be doing, and he sure as hell had no idea where he was going, if Merle was even still in Georgia or if he’d found a car somewhere and taken off for Tallahassee or Biloxi or God knew where else. It took him a long time to make it to the campsite, and when he got there he lowered himself to the ground, his back against his favorite sitting-tree, and tried to rest his ankle while he surveyed the woods around him, his eyes snagging on the charred remains of his sleeping bag lying on the cold pile of firewood and ashes. 

How the fuck was he going to find Merle? Daryl was really his only shot at tracking him, but he doubted Daryl would help him and anyway, Daryl didn’t seem to be having that much luck with the tracking if all of the head-shaking was true. And who knew if it was? Shane would just have to take that on faith. 

Shane sighed and leaned his head back against the trunk of the tree. He’d seen as he walked up the hill that most of the perimeter he and Merle had set up was still intact, so maybe it would be best to just sleep here until it got lighter and then take up the search in the morning. And besides, if Merle came back, he wanted to be here at their campsite. Waiting for him. 

Shane rolled down to lie on the ground, tucked his arm under his head, and slept.

***

The clanging cans at the edge of the perimeter woke Shane up the next morning. He snapped up to a sitting position and tried to struggle to his feet, wincing as he put just a tiny bit of weight on his bad ankle. Shane pulled his hunting knife out of his belt and held it out, moving slowly toward the sound, hopping on his good foot as much as he could without giving himself away.

Down the hill a bit, there were two walkers struggling to get past the ropes that Shane and Merle had tied to the trees as part of the perimeter. Shane sighed, muttering _fucking walkers_ under his breath, and turned around to pick up one of his crutches and use it in place of his injured leg. He held his knife at the ready while hobbling back out toward the walkers.

Shane killed them easily, with more annoyance than fear. He wondered when he’d reached the point where two-to-one walker fights didn’t even phase him anymore. Granted, more than two of them would still have been a threat--it wasn’t like they were an easy foe, at least not in numbers--but two was almost a walk in the park these days. 

He thought of Merle hacking at the walkers at the creek, totally naked and not at all worried about it. Thought of the way that Rick and Daryl had moved together at the high school like they were two halves of the same body, perfectly in-sync, and he wondered if he and Merle were like that, too. He thought back on the fight at the creek again, on how he’d understood all of Merle’s motions and signals, how everything between them had been honest like it had never been with anyone else. 

It occurred to him that maybe the hope of meeting Merle Dixon at the end of the world was the reason he’d been single all his life. 

But Merle wasn’t here. In the light of day, Shane could see that it didn’t look like anyone had been at the campsite for a while, which made sense considering that surely this would have been somewhere Daryl would have looked for his brother. So Merle hadn’t waited for him. He’d meant it when he said in his letter that he was gone. 

Shane fought back the stinging on the backs of his eyeballs and ran a quick hand under his nose, letting out one loud sniffle but no more. Merle was gone. But he couldn’t accept that. He wouldn’t. He would find that son of a bitch and he would give him a stern talking-to about leaving people, about not just staying put and waiting to be found again. About never fucking leaving anyone again. About never leaving _Shane_ again. 

But first he had to find him. 

He stood there for a while, leaning on his good leg, his tongue caught between his teeth as he considered his options. Bringing Daryl back in to the search was probably the most effective plan of action--Merle had started to teach Shane a few things about tracking, but it wasn’t enough yet and Shane knew it. Then again, Shane wasn’t really sure he wanted to owe anything else to Daryl, not after the guy had saved his life at the high school. And besides, Shane wanted to find Merle himself, to show that he was looking for him. To show that he was coming back for him, like he’d promised.

Shane steadied the crutch under his leg and started making his way toward the creek. 

***

It took Shane an hour and a half to get from the campsite to the swimming hole--a trip that had taken him and Merle about fifteen minutes before. But the crutch kept slipping into holes and catching on roots, and by the time Shane got down to the creekbed, he was hot and cranky, pouring sweat, his armpit bruised and sore where the crutch kept hitting it. He threw the crutch down and limp-hopped over to the log where he and Merle used to sit after a swim. 

Shane carefully sat down on the log and slowly pulled his boots off, biting his bottom lip hard while he tried to maneuver his now-swollen ankle out of its boot. He really should have let Hershel put a splint on it at least, but he’d been in such a hurry to get out of the house that he hadn’t bothered, and now all he could think about was getting his ankle into the cold creek water and letting it soak for a while.

Well, that and Merle. Of course. Shane got the feeling that for the rest of his life, “and Merle” could probably be added to the list of things he was thinking about. Whether he ever found him again or not.

He dropped his boot off to the side and looked around. The water was clear and smelled cold, swirling downstream with a gentle bubbling noise as it went over submerged logs and a few large rocks. The sand on either side of the bank was smooth, silty, and… 

There were footprints.

Shane was on his feet immediately. The tracks were fresh in the wet mud, and they were too evenly-paced and steady to be walker prints. He guessed that there could be someone else in the woods--a stranger passing through, or maybe Daryl out tracking--but Shane was suddenly struck with the certainty that he knew who had made these tracks. 

“Merle,” he called out, hopping over to where he’d dropped his crutch. “Merle.”

There was no answer except the gurgling of the stream. Shane frowned into the trees where the tracks disappeared. “Merle,” he called again, louder this time. Still no answer.

Shane grabbed his crutch and winced as he tucked it under his arm again, then headed for the treeline, still calling Merle’s name. Still hoping that he’d be there, waiting. Waiting for Shane. 

He paused at the treeline and looked back at the creek. “Merle Dixon, if that’s you then you better come out,” he called. “I’ll just keep lookin’ for you until you do.” He paused, waited for an answer. When none came, he started just bellowing Merle’s name at the top of his lungs, letting all his fear and passion and anger flow into the sound as it filtered through the forest.

“Hush up before you call every walker in the state on us,” Merle said from behind a tree. Shane let out an embarrassing little whimper of relief and Merle stepped into view, not looking at Shane, just staring at the leaves and pinestraw on the ground in front of him.

“Holy shit,” Shane said. “Merle.” He tossed his crutch down again, hobbled over to Merle, and threw himself up against his chest, wrapping his arms around the man and trying like hell to burrow directly into his heart. “Fuck, I thought I’d lost you, man. I thought you were gone.”

Merle relaxed against him for just a second before he tensed up again. “The hell are you doing here? Had your fill of bacon already?” He put his hand on Shane’s chest and pushed. 

Shane reluctantly let go of him and took a step back. Merle’s eyes were dark, guarded, his mouth turned downward even more than usual. “I came back,” Shane said, wrinkling his brow and searching Merle’s face for any sign of emotion. “I told you I would.”

Merle nodded briskly, the muscles of his neck standing out like he was five seconds from bolting into the woods. “Well, say your piece then.”

Shane blinked several times, his mouth hanging open just a little. “What piece?”

“Go ahead and tell me what you came to say,” Merle snapped. “We both know it’s bullshit, but I figure you limped all the way out here to tell me and so you might as well get it over with.”

Shane stared at him. “The fuck are you _talking_ about, man?”

Merle spat on the ground, kicking soil over it with the toe of his shoe. “About how you’re out here to call Tinkerbell on me. To tell me you’re joinin’ back up with the group. Fuck that, by the by, but it ain’t like I wasn’t expecting it.”

“Man, you’re _crazy_ ,” Shane said. “That’s not what I’m here for.”

“Then what are you here for?” Merle countered. “Checkin’ your damn snares? Trying to see if I’m dumber than those rabbits you couldn’t never catch?”

“I’m here for _you_ , asshole,” Shane said back. He took a deep breath, ran his hand over the short stubble of hair on his scalp. “I came back to be with you. And you shouldn’t have left. You should have waited for me.”

“Fuck that,” Merle said again. “I ain’t sittin’ at the scene of a crime waiting on the pigs to get there and tell me I done something wrong.”

“So you’d rather just cut your own hand off again instead of wait a few hours for help?” Shane asked, frowning deeply. 

Merle sighed, still watching him with suspicion and uncertainty. “You was gone. I figured you’d either decided to stay or you’d gotten eaten by walkers, and either way I didn’t want to be there when _Rick_ ,” he spat the word out like it tasted terrible, “came to tell me about it.”

“I told you I’d come back,” Shane said again, quietly. “And I won’t ever lie to you about that. I swear.” 

“Why should I believe you, huh?” Merle crossed his arms and widened his stance to a defensive one. “Give ol’ Merle one good reason why he ought to trust you.”

Shane met Merle’s eyes and squared his jaw with conviction. “Because you put a fire in my gut, you bastard. And I ain’t letting that go out.” 

Merle’s eyes flashed and Shane could see his barriers slowly breaking down. “And what about Officer Friendly?”

“Went out a long time ago,” Shane said. “Actually… I don’t think it was ever lit. Not really. Not like this.”

Merle’s mouth twitched like he was guarding back a smile. “Like this, huh?”

“Yeah,” Shane said, ducking his head and giving Merle bedroom eyes through his eyelashes. “You’re a sexy motherfucker and I want more, you know?”

Merle grunted and his mouth twitched again. “So what’s your game plan then, hoss? We gonna find a chapel and braid daisies in our hair and run off to Bermuda together or somethin’? That what you want?”

Shane took a deep breath and shrugged. “Who really has a game plan these days? I guess I just want to survive. With you. For however long we can, you know?”

Merle grinned then, the expression breaking across his face like heat lightning in the humid Georgia air. “You really mean that, boy? Because if you’re just jerkin’ me around, then I’ll string you up and use you for walker bait.”

“I do mean it,” Shane said. He stepped forward and put a hand on Merle’s cheek. “You…” He trailed off, then shrugged and gave a lopsided smile. “You. Just you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Merle said, pulling Shane in for a quick, deep, dirty kiss. “Te amo también, señorita.”

Their lips met again and Shane nearly melted, his heart skipping several beats and something a lot like joy rushing to his head. Merle’s arms were around him, his fingers trailing over Shane’s body, pulling him tightly in, and Shane gave everything up to him, let Merle have his heart and his life and his future. His love. His trust. 

And then, mid-kiss, Merle broke away with a growl. “Good. Now that we’re on the same page again...” He let go of Shane, stepped back, tossed him a granite-stern look that was topped by sparkling eyes. “On your knees, baby. Nice and slow.”

Shane slid to his knees without hesitation and waited for the rest of his life to begin.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious to see what was going on with Daryl and Rick in the background (and if you want to see what happened at the high school where Shane got hurt again), the ever-awesome Michelle_A_Emerlind has written a companion piece to this that follows Rickyl's part of the story. The stories do stand alone, but they work well together to give a little more depth. You can read "Lower Fields" [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2771033).


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